The Carolina Hurricanes defeated the New York Islanders 5-3 this Thursday, Nov. 5, at UBS Arena in Elmont, but that did not exempt them from criticism.
To be honest, the Canes had stretches where they simply didn’t do things well, but they stayed afloat thanks to one specific player: Brandon Bussi.
That is precisely the opinion ESPN’s Adam Gold shared on the postgame edition of the “Canes Corner” podcast.
Gold highlighted Bussi’s importance to the team, even though he admitted he had doubts about him after a long stretch without playing in the NHL. Either way, he still called Bussi the team’s only star in the game against the Islanders.
Adam Gold Calls Brandon Bussi the Hurricanes’ Only Star vs. Islanders
He said, “Here’s what I always come back to with Brandon Bussi. I always come back to this. Whenever he has had to deal with adversity, he comes out on the other side just fine.”
“So I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of stretches where he doesn’t play well. My guess is he’ll get one of the games in Finland; I hope he plays well there.”
“I think they’re going to use (Pyotr) Kochetkov as the number one for the most part, but I think they’ll both play. And now that Brandon has this game under his belt, I don’t think Rod Brind’Amour feels like he’s got to ride Kochetkov like a pack mule.”
“So to me, the best thing I saw today was the way Brandon Bussi played.”
“Because if he doesn’t play as he did, if you watch the game, I mean, seven was out there for the Islanders. That’s how leaky Carolina was.”
“I don’t know how many breakaways there were. I saw somebody say seven. I don’t think there were seven, but I bet there were four or five breakaways.”
“There were two-on-ones. There were shots in the slot. Brandon Bussi was the reason they won the game today. The reason they had a chance to win the game today, let alone come across and win it.”
“So yeah, I thought he was a runaway first star for me. In fact, it was kind of hard because Carolina really wasn’t very good for 40 minutes.”
“I really didn’t have many stars other than Bussi, because Brandon Bussi was a star from the very beginning tonight.”
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