It wasn't enough as they lost 39-26 to the Stormers in Cape Town this morning.
The 20-year-old pivot scored a try and set another up in an assured display, but the young Hurricanes outfit had their deficiencies up front exploited by a hungry Stormers forward pack.
Three Hurricanes props were sent for a spell in the sin bin with Ben May, Tristan Moran and Jeffery Toomaga-Allen all shown yellow cards during the game, while Jeremy Thrush also picked up a white card.
The visitors found themselves on the wrong side of the officiating throughout the match and also had a potentially-match-winning try to Motu Matu'u disallowed late in the game.
The replacement hooker ran on to a slick Barrett offload and crashed over the line _ when they were down 29-23 _ but was judged by television match official Shaun Veldsman to have lost control of the ball in the act of scoring.
From there Joe Pietersen added another three points from his boot before a penalty try to the Stormers with less than 10 minutes remaining sealed the Hurricanes' fate.
Coach Mark Hammett didn't want to blame referee Marius Jonker for the loss, despite the vast amount of scrum penalties dished out to his side, but he thought Matu'u had dotted down.
"With my yellow and black eye-patch on I thought it was definitely a try,'' Hammett said. "He was under control and when he went down the ball had pressure down on the line. For me I thought it was a try.''
Barrett ended the game with 21 points as he added two conversions and four penalties to his five-pointer, while new recruit Tim Bateman crossed for the visitors' other try just before half-time.
The Hurricanes trailed throughout most of the match after the home side got on the board in the fourth minute when Gio Aplon nabbed the first try.
Hurricanes centre Conrad Smith, who started the match after having a limited pre-season campaign, said there were some encouraging signs when he was interviewed after the final whistle.
"It was a strange game in a lot of ways. We were down on the canvas for a little bit in the first half when they mauled over a couple of times and we shot back and tied the game up early in the second half,'' the skipper said.
"We tried to be patient. We know it was tough to play here, it's probably the hardest way to start a campaign, come over here and play the Stormers, so it wasn't all bad.
"We are a new bunch, we had seven guys playing their first game [for the franchise] today. It's a huge ask playing something like that here. We've got a lot to learn and all we can ask is that we keep getting better. So that's the challenge for us now.''
The loss consigned the Hurricanes to the bottom of the New Zealand conference and they were the only losing side during the opening round of the competition to not claim a bonus point for losing within seven points.
The Hurricanes' next game is against the Lions in Johannesburg at 6.10am on Saturday morning (NZT).
Stormers 39 (Gio Aplon, Siyamthanda Kolisi tries, penalty try; Joe Pietersen 3 con, 3 pen; Gary van Aswegen drop goal) Hurricanes 26 (Tim Bateman, Beauden Barrett tries;. Barrett 2 con, 4 pen). HT: 23-16.
