RALEIGH \u2014 It appears that Carolina goaltender Brandon Bussi will start for the second consecutive game in Thursday\u2019s Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.<\/p>\n
Bussi was in the stater\u2019s crease at the Hurricanes\u2019 morning stake Thursday. Frederik Andersen, who started the first 16 postseason games for Carolina, wasn\u2019t at the practice session open to the media.<\/p>\n
Carolina and the Vegas Golden Knights are tied 2-2 in the best-of-seven series.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s available,\u201d Carolina coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour said when asked about Andersen. \u201cHe staked this morning earlier. As far as the lineup goes, that\u2019s all I\u2019m going to talk about \u2014 everybody\u2019s available.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brind\u2019Amour declined to answer if Andersen, who didn\u2019t dress in Game 4, would be the backup for Game 5. Bussi replaced Andersen after the second period in Game 3.<\/p>\n
Bussi earned the win in Game 4 in Vegas, his first career postseason start. An undrafted free agent who was claimed off waivers before the season, Bussi went 31-6-2 in 39 games during the regular season, earning a contract extension and the trust of his team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a guy that was given an opportunity,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cEveryone talks about opportunity, you got to do something with it, and he\u2019s done nothing but every start that he\u2019s had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andersen was brilliant through the first few series. But his goals against average has increased each round while his save percentage has decreased. He allowed four goals in the second period of Game 3 before he was removed.<\/p>\n
Andersen didn\u2019t practice with the team on the off day between Game 3 and 4, and then didn\u2019t dress for Game 4.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to give him a break, you need to give him a break,\u201d Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cTo me, him dressing and going through all that, that\u2019s not really giving him a night off.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
While much of the focus has been on the Hurricanes\u2019 goaltender situation, Vegas is facing questions, too, about goalie Carter Hart.<\/p>\n
Hart is 14-6 in the postseason with a 2.51 goals against average, but he has allowed four goals in each of the first four games of the series. His save percentage in the Stanley Cup Final is .877. In a four-game sweep of Colorado in the Western Conference Final, Hart allowed a total of seven goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Vegas coach John Tortorella said he\u2019s not concerned with Hart.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no, at all,\u201d\u00a0 he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RALEIGH \u2014 It appears that Carolina goaltender Brandon Bussi will start for the second consecutive game in Thursday\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":860283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[42],"tags":[3107,293,62,7010,5514,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-860282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-carolina-hurricanes","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-stanley-cup","tag-stanley-cup-final","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116732551981337804","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}