Brandon Bussi Was Free in October
On October 5, the Florida Panthers put a 27-year-old goalie on waivers. Every team in the league could have had him for nothing. Thirty of them passed.
Carolina claimed him.
Eight months later he shut out Vegas in Game 6 to win the Stanley Cup.
The stat
Bussi is the third first-year goalie in NHL history to post a shutout in a Cup-clinching game.
The last one was Earl Robertson, Detroit Red Wings, 1937.
That's an 89-year gap. In between: the entire Original Six era, expansion, the Gretzky years, the dead puck era, the lockout, the cap. Nobody did it.
It was Bussi's 43rd NHL appearance. His third career playoff start.
How he even got in the net
Andersen started the first 16 games of the postseason. Every minute of every one of them. He went 13-2 with a 1.89 goals-against and three shutouts, which is a ridiculous run for a guy who went 16-14-5 with a .874 in the regular season.
Then the Final started and it fell apart. Through three games he was at a 4.44 GAA and a .815 save percentage.
Game 3 in Vegas, Carolina's down 4-0, and Brind'Amour pulls him to start the third. Bussi comes in cold for his first playoff appearance ever.
What happened next in that third period: Carolina scored three goals in 39 seconds, which is a Cup Final record. Bussi stopped the first 18 shots he faced, including a Mitch Marner penalty shot. They tied it and went to overtime.
They lost anyway — Shea Theodore banked one off the end boards and in off Bussi's pad in double OT. But that was the game the series turned.
The decision
Brind'Amour had a call to make for Game 4 and he wouldn't tell anybody. Said he'd made a decision and was keeping it secret. "It's the only suspense around here."
He scratched the goalie who was 13-2.
That's a genuinely nuts thing to do in the Stanley Cup Final. You're down 2-1 in the series, you're on the road, and you sit the guy who just went 13-2 in favor of a waiver claim making his first career playoff start.
Bussi made 18 saves and Carolina won 5-3. Then 23 saves in a 4-2 Game 5 win in Raleigh. Then 22 saves and the shutout in Game 6.
Three starts. Three wins. A Cup.
Andersen didn't dress again.
Why he was available at all
Bussi ended up leading Carolina with 39 starts in the regular season and went 31-6-2. That's not a backup's record.
He got the workload because Andersen struggled and Kochetkov needed surgery on a lower-body injury. So the guy claimed off waivers in October became the primary starter by accident, and then watched Andersen play every second of the first four rounds anyway.
He's also one of three goalies in the expansion era to make his first playoff start in a Cup Final. The other two are Andrei Vasilevskiy in 2015 and Jussi Markkanen in 2006. Neither of them won.
What he said after
He spent his first interview crediting Andersen.
Said he loved him, called him a workhorse, said he only got three and a half games and Andersen deserved more of the credit.
That's a guy who was on waivers in October talking about the goalie he replaced in the Cup Final. He's right, too. Andersen won 13 playoff games. Somebody had to get them there.
The part that's hard to get over
Every general manager in the league had a chance to claim Brandon Bussi for free on October 5.
Eight months later he had his name on the Stanley Cup and a shutout nobody had matched since 1937.
Carolina put in the claim.
