Brandon Bussi

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

39 appearances, 31-6-2, a 2.47 goals-against average and a .894 save percentage with 2 shutouts. His first NHL season, at 27, undrafted.

The Physical Game

6-4, 218, and he plays the modern positional game — deep, square, letting the puck find him. Against the volume of low-danger shots a team like this concedes, that works.

The technique is unremarkable and the athleticism is ordinary. When he has to make a save that is not already in front of him, it is visibly harder work than it is for the better goaltenders in this book.

The Mental Game

An undrafted goaltender who reached the NHL at 27 and won 31 of 39, which requires a temperament even if it does not require much else.

Over his last 10 appearances, .868 on 235 shots, which is a genuinely alarming finish and the reason this page carries a warning rather than a celebration.

The Intangibles

31 and 6 is one of the best won-lost records any goaltender will ever post and it is almost entirely not his. He stopped .894 — below the league median of .896 — behind a club that led the NHL in shot-attempt share at 59.8 per cent and finished 2nd on the penalty kill.

Carolina’s goaltending came in 13 goals worse than the chances it faced would predict. This was the one weakness on the best possession team in hockey, and it is the reason a club that generated 201 expected goals at 5-on-5 scored 184 and gave up more than it should have.

He is 28 with 39 games. The record will not repeat and the save percentage has to improve, or this club will keep losing games it comprehensively controlled.