How Brandon Bussi went from undrafted goalie to record-breaking 27-year-old phenom – The Athletic
In his first NHL action, Carolina Hurricanes goalie Brandon Bussi has put up an incredible 16-3-1 record over his first 20 starts. He became the fastest goalie in NHL history to 10 wins, doing it in only 11 games.
He’s among the league leaders with a minuscule 2.31 goals-against average and has backstopped Carolina to the top of the Eastern Conference standings. If he carries this level of play into the spring and summer, he could be the long-missing piece to the Hurricanes’ championship puzzle.
What makes the miraculous start to his NHL career even more improbable is that Bussi, 27, is too old to qualify as a rookie.
So, where did this undrafted puck stopper come from?
The Hurricanes claimed Bussi off waivers from the Florida Panthers on Oct. 5, just days before the regular season began. He had spent the first three seasons of his professional career in the minor leagues within the Boston Bruins organization. The journey of the late bloomer started much earlier, in his final season of junior hockey.
Bussi hadn’t had a very impressive junior career before 2018, when he joined the Muskegon Lumberjacks. He was excellent that year, among the best goalies in the United States Hockey League, and caught the attention of the nearby university, Western Michigan. The Broncos offered him a scholarship and — much like his recent introduction to the NHL — Bussi was an instant hit.
“When we saw him in the net, we knew right away that he was going to be the guy,” said Western Michigan goaltending coach J.J. Crew. “Every day in practice, his attention to detail with his technique, and how dialed in he was with his practice habits. He was just locked in on a different level.”
Bussi is a big, rangy, athletic goalie with great feel for the game. He was the Broncos’ starter from his first day on campus, and helped them to wins over three different ranked opponents in his first handful of starts.
“He’s a sponge,” Crew recalled of his days working with Bussi. “He’s really easy to work with and a great kid. He’s always continuing to learn any way he can. He’s really open to new information. He’s never been one to say, ‘No, this is the way I’ve always done it.’”
Bussi credits his parents, Rob and Lisa, for his workmanlike mentality, attention to detail and maturity early in his career.
“Maturity can mean a lot of different things, but I think I have a unique perspective on the hockey world and life in a sense,” Bussi said. “I try to be able to brush things off and go with the flow, while also being critical when it’s needed.”
Crew felt Western Michigan had a team that could’ve contended for a title in Bussi’s freshman season, but it was cut short due to COVID-19. When Bussi returned for his sophomore year, he was even better.
“In training camp that year, he just looked on a different level,” Crew said. “As a coaching staff, we were talking about how we needed to be out recruiting another goalie for next year, because after this year he’s going to sign (with a pro team).”
Bussi pulled his groin halfway into the opening game, costing him nearly his entire sophomore season. He came back as a junior and won the fourth-most games in the NCAA, and eventually signed with the Bruins in April 2022.
“It was just a question of whether he could get back to what we all knew he could be post-injury,” Crew said, “and I think since he’s been at the pro level, he has continued to earn his way and take steps, moving up the ranks.”
During Bussi’s three seasons in the Bruins organization, he was stuck behind several talented goalies. Linus Ullmark, Jeremy Swayman and Joonas Korpisalo at the NHL level offered little opportunity for promotion, so this summer, Bussi signed a one-year, two-way contract with the Florida Panthers. After training camp, the Panthers placed him on waivers with the hopes of sending him to the AHL, but Carolina surprisingly claimed him.
Hurricanes goalie Pyotr Kochetkov missed the start of the season with a lower-body injury that later required surgery and is expected to keep him out for the remainder of the year, opening the door for Bussi to see NHL action.
When Bussi made his NHL debut on Oct. 14, he posted a quote from Robert Frost on his Instagram account: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
“I think adversity is a really good thing to have,” Bussi said of his path to the NHL. “Every player, to get to the top level, has faced some adversity. Even the superstars, with injury or whatever. I think my adversity was maybe a little more unique early on, in terms of my junior hockey career. Things weren’t going great for me. A lot of it was between the ears. It was my first time being away from home. Even though I was 18 and I felt like I was mature, there were areas that weren’t quite ready.”
When Bussi finally got his chance, he was ready.
He won his debut in San Jose, then helped the Hurricanes top the Kings in overtime four nights later in Los Angeles. After a close loss to Dallas in his third start, Bussi strung together nine consecutive victories for the hottest start to a career in NHL history.
“It’s exciting because it’s what you work hard for your whole life, for this opportunity,” he said. “But it has also been normal. This is what I’ve done for many years in my life. Yes, at the NHL level there’s more media, more people watching the games on TV, more people in the crowd. You see Bussi jerseys in the crowd, so it’s a little different, but I’m 27 now. I’m not an 18-year-old with the eyes wide open.”
What have been the biggest keys to Bussi’s instant success? The first thing that immediately stands out about his game is how aggressively he attacks the puck, especially when it’s in tight. Bussi plays at the top of his crease and takes more aggressive angles than most goalies, often catching shooters off-guard.
“He just smothers guys and makes it look easy,” Crew said. “He is so competitive on every shot.”
In an era when goaltending has become increasingly formulaic, Bussi is no robot. He has an active stick and uses surprising save selections. Most noticeably, he doesn’t sit back on his goal line and react to shots. He attacks shooting angles as aggressively as the situation will allow, such as on this sequence of saves against Philadelphia on Dec. 14.
Bussi has a big frame at 6-foot-4, 218 pounds, but has great feet. He uses them to maximize his size by controlling his gap to shooters. We often use the term “gap control” when discussing defensemen defending on the rush, but it’s equally important for goalies in one-on-one situations. It’s also one of the areas in which Bussi’s aggression stands out most.
In a shootout or breakaway, most goalies adhere to the “Y” strategy. It starts with an aggressive challenge to gain depth outside of the crease. Then, usually once the puck carrier is roughly within a stick length of the goalie, he retreats. This forces the player to either shoot or choose a side to deke to. Once the shooter chooses a side, the goalie slides back on that angle, creating a Y shape.
That angle is typically close to a direct line back to the post, but this is where Bussi differs. He attacks on a much sharper angle, invading space the shooter is accustomed to having. Not only does it crowd the puck and cut down shooting angles, it often surprises the shooter.
The difference is subtle, but to shooters who have seen goalies react one way for most of their careers, it can be jarring.
“As a coach, I’d go out and try to score on him, and I couldn’t even make a move because he was already on top of me,” Crew explained. “It’s crazy to think that as a goalie, the way he plays the position, he plays it from an attacking standpoint.”
Here’s an example of Bussi executing this concept on a shootout attempt by Washington’s Dylan Strome on Dec. 11.
Crew’s description of Bussi “smothering” shooters is perfect. This replay shows two key points that make it so effective. First, notice how Bussi keeps his glove out in front of him, pointing down at the puck throughout the attempt. That crowds the puck and eliminates shooting angles.
Most importantly, watch how Bussi’s left skate blade catches the ice as Strome dekes. At this point, most goalies allow their momentum to carry them back toward their net, but as soon as Bussi realizes the shot is coming, he digs his skate in and attacks the puck.
Here’s another example, from Carolina’s 6-3 win over Dallas on Jan. 6. Stars forward Wyatt Johnston made a sensational play to dance through the Hurricanes defenese, but ran out of room when Bussi cut off the angle and lunged at the puck rather than passively retreating and reacting to his dekes.
“I don’t want (the shooter) to feel like he’s entirely in control,” Bussi explained. “My job is to do my best to take away the shot. If I take away the shot, it forces them to make a deke. At that point, if I’m close enough, I rely on my size and angles to fill the net.”
The mindset doesn’t just apply to one-on-one situations. Bussi uses smart reads to identify shooting threats early, and attacks those angles as well. Here’s an exaggerated example of an incredible save on a one-timer by Alex Ovechkin.
That’s obviously not the route most goalies would take on that play. Bussi ends up stuffing the shot basically directly off of Ovechkin’s stick blade, well outside of the blue paint.
Like with anything in goaltending, every decision has some give and take, and the aggression can work against Bussi at times. Playing that far away from his goal line can lead to difficulties on second-chance opportunities in particular. Big-picture, though, it helps him make saves more than it hurts him. It also allows him to play freely and on instinct.
In this final example, Bussi’s aggressive routes helped him make one of his best saves of the season on a grade-A chance by Stars forward Sam Steel on Jan. 6.
It’s more subtle on this play, but the extra inches of depth Bussi buys himself are the difference between a goal and a save, especially on a point-blank redirect with no time to react to the flight of the puck.
By sliding out toward the shooter rather than back to his far post, Bussi does two things. First, he speeds up the process by eliminating the need to rotate his hips. Second, he gets his glove as close to the redirect as possible.
The result is a beautiful, smothering, glove save.
Bussi has enjoyed the ride over the last few months. He often says he feels like he’s playing with house money, and credits his team for his record-breaking start. The Hurricanes’ top-ranked defense is well deserving of the praise.
“It’s obviously exciting,” he said. “A lot of that stuff is definitely the team. It doesn’t happen without really good efforts in front of me. They make my life easy.”
That’s nothing new for the Hurricanes, who have been one of the best shot-suppression teams in the NHL for the better part of a decade, but it has yet to result in a Stanley Cup championship. Carolina has made seven consecutive trips to the playoffs, and has used multiple goalies in each of those seven postseasons. It’s not that the Hurricanes have been completely undone by their goaltending, but they also haven’t gotten special performances in net. The kind that are often required to win it all.
Bussi has allowed two or fewer goals in 11 of his 20 starts, and has allowed more than three goals only twice.
May and June are a long way off, but perhaps Bussi can be that player. He leans on all of the work and preparation that have carried him to this point, and believes his lengthy path – going undrafted, spending years in the AHL, being claimed off waivers – was the correct one for him to end up in this position.
“Especially for goalies, there’s so much development that goes on,” he said. “It’s ironic, now that I’m 27, but the ultimate mindset is, you don’t want to be the best 18-year-old, you want to be the best 27-year-old. This is when you hit your prime, in a sense. I hope I have more than just now, obviously, but it’s such a long process to get where you want to be. In the end, it was a long process for me.
“We’re all striving for the dream of playing in the NHL, which is really what it is.”
