Manny Malhotra<\/a> paired him with 20-year-old Zeev Buium to begin Canucks training camp.<\/p>\nNow 36, Schenn understands his assignment on this pairing with Buium will resemble his previous one with Hughes. At training camp, Schenn reminisced on other veteran defencemen who helped mentor him when he was entering the league, and feels fortunate to be able to pay it forward yet again:<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess when I was a young guy, I had a great mentor and guys who I played with,\u201d Schenn remembered. \u201cDating myself here, but I played with Tomas Kaberle\u00a0for a few years, and then Kimmo Timonen in\u00a0Philly, and I just remember how they treated me, and\u00a0their\u00a0wisdom and veteran presence, and how they rubbed off on me. Now it kind of feels like roles reverse, where you get to\u00a0maybe mentor someone else, and\u00a0as much as you feel like you\u2019re maybe mentoring someone, I feel like\u00a0I\u2019m the lucky guy who\u00a0gets to play with these young guys who are\u00a0up and coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know how good a defenceman Quinn was and has become in this league, and how special he is, and you know,\u00a0you don\u2019t want to compare anyone, but obviously Zeev has\u00a0an incredible skill set and toolbox himself too. Watching him from a distance when he first broke into the Wild, and how he kind of stepped in and ran that power play in the playoffs, and then watching him a little bit last year and following the trade a little bit, you can just tell how bright his upside was.\u00a0I got a couple buddies who were in Minnesota and told me what a great\u00a0young\u00a0guy he was, and just how he\u00a0understands the locker room and gets what it\u2019s like to be a pro, and he puts in the work and has just a ton of confidence. He\u2019s\u00a0kind of proven at every level, and he\u2019s going to make great strides here in the NHL;\u00a0we\u2019re relying on him big time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just feel\u00a0fortunate to get to play with him. And as much as maybe he\u2019s leaning on me, I\u00a0think it\u2019s a partnership, and I can lean on him.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Schenn feels fortunate to be in this position to play with a defenceman like Buium, this opportunity to have a mentor like Schenn is not lost on the young defenceman. And although it may just be the first few days of training camp, the learning has already begun for Buium:<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, a lot,\u201d Buium replied when asked what type of lessons he can learn from the veteran Schenn. \u201cI mean, I think he\u2019s been a guy who\u2019s literally been in every possible situation\u00a0as a player and been able to learn a lot from him off the ice, and he\u2019s kind of taken me under his wing a little bit. So\u00a0that\u2019s been pretty awesome. Just to be out there with him, I think it\u2019s just the little things that he notices, you know, especially defensively. Offensively,\u00a0this is the first time we played together, so obviously didn\u2019t do\u00a0too much O-zone today, but\u00a0just trying to grow chemistry together. I think defensively, even out there today, he was a huge help for me, just having that presence, and he kills plays so well and just those veteran things that, you know, I\u2019m trying to get better at every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll see how this pairing plays together in the preseason and if Malhotra and his staff ultimately decide to stick with the duo for opening night. However, the Canucks have made a hefty investment in Buium, signing him to an eight-year, $75.04 million extension<\/a>. Having an example of how Schenn can work with a young defenceman and help them develop into a superstar not too long ago would put Buium in the best position to succeed and hit his maximum potential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canucks\u2019 Schenn feels \u2018fortunate\u2019 to play mentorship role on pairing with Buium In the 2021-22 season, the 31-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-903072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}