OTTAWA — Night after night, Carolina Hurricanes rookie goaltender Brandon Bussi continues to earn his starting role for one of the hottest teams in hockey.
Posting a .972 save percentage while saving 35 of 36 shots against, Bussi effectively stymied any offence that Ottawa could muster on Saturday. According to Carolina head coach Rod Brind’Amour, Bussi can take most of the credit for his team’s 4-1 victory over the Senators, the Canes’ 32nd win of the season.
“That’s two points that he got for our group,” Brind’Amour said. “There wasn’t much else going on there tonight.”
Bussi’s performance between the pipes iced a three-goal opening frame for the Hurricanes (32-15-5), as they bested the Senators (23-21-7), moving into top spot in the NHL’s Eastern Conference with more regulation wins than the Detroit Red Wings.
“Bussi was really good,” Carolina forward Taylor Hall said. “I don’t think they had a lot of second-chance rebound opportunities, but he was really good on the first save.”
“I feel like we ran into some hot goaltending,” Senators head coach Travis Green said.
This first meetup between the Hurricanes and the Senators this season opened with a ceremony honouring former head coach Jacques Martin’s induction into the Senators’ Ring of Honour. The Senators’ all-time coaching leader in wins, playoff victories and total games coached, was their bench boss between 1996 to 2004, the Jack Adams Award winner in the 1998-99 season and briefly took the helm again during Ottawa’s 2023-24 campaign.
The Hurricanes took hold of the game early when blueliner Jalen Chatfield’s cross-ice pass sprung Mark Jankowski on an odd-man rush, where he fed William Carriercross-slot for an easy backhand tap-in to open the scoring just four minutes in.
Then only two minutes later, Seth Jarvis beat Senators’ goaltender James Reimer cleanly with a top-corner snipe from the faceoff circle to double the Hurricanes’ lead. Taylor Hall rounded out a dominant period for the visitors, piercing Reimer’s five-hole to bury the Senators 3-0 heading into the just first intermission.
“That was a big goal for us because it gave us a cushion,” Brind’Amour said.
Through the first frame, Reimer allowed three goals on eight shots, not an ideal start for the 37-year-old veteran who was signed and dispatched in starter Linus Ullmark’s absence.
At the other end of the ice, Bussi saved all 14 shots against in the first period.
Nine minutes into the second period, a tripping call against Claude Giroux combined with Jake Sanderson’s high-sticking penalty from 10 seconds earlier to put Ottawa’s struggling penalty kill up against a 5-on-3 power playfor the Hurricanes.
Less than a minute later, Carolina’s Andrei Svechnikov tossed the puck in front of the Senators’ crease where it found its way through Reimer off Tyler Kleven’s skate.
Suddenly, halfway through the game, the Senators were down by four.
“There’s a reason they have success every single year, it’s the way they play,” Ottawa defender Thomas Chabot said. “They don’t give you anything.”
Ottawa finally came up with an answer when Sanderson fed Tim Stützle for a wrist shot in-close, catching Bussi out of position to finally put the home team on the board.
But Bussi wouldn’t be beaten again, as he closed out the Senators with 15 savesin the third period.
Despite earning a 4-1 win on the night, head coach Brind’Amour wasn’t entirely pleased with the effort his Hurricanes displayed after opening the game with a 3-0 run in the first period.
“You get out to that early lead and it’s just human nature a little bit to let off the gas,” Brind’Amour said. “Our goalie won us the game. We’ll take the two points and move on.”
While the winning coach bemoaned his team’s performance, the bench boss on the losing side of the scoresheet highlighted positives.
“We have liked our game a lot and sometimes we’re not going to win, there’s many different reasons that we haven’t over the season so far,” Green said. “But I do know that if we keep playing the right way we’ll be on the right side most nights.”
Second-last in the Eastern conference, the Senators outshot the Hurricanes 36-19, but that mismatch didn’t deliver them more goals than their visitors.
“We played some good hockey, obviously the shots showed that,” forward Drake Batherson said. “At the end of the day we got to score more than one.
“We get another tough team coming in (Sunday) in Vegas and I think if we play similar to tonight and clean up our mistakes, I like our chances.”
Despite sitting at the bottom of a deep Atlantic Division, the Senators players and coaches remain optimistic about their play, but just haven’t found a way to put everything together on a consistent enough basis to challenge for a playoff spot.
“There’s still 30-plus games,” Tkachuk said. “Anything can happen.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 25, 2026.
David Cummings, The Canadian Press
