Earlier this evening, Braden Holtby got a reminder that he was no longer in front of his hometown fans. Before warm-ups, Holtby always walks out of the locker room and does his pregame visualizations from the Caps bench.
“It’s just visualization techniques, breathing techniques,” Holtby said to RMNB in 2013. “It’s just one of the things I do I try to do to get my mind in the same frame every night. It gets a lot of attention but a lot of guys do it, you just don’t see it.”
Monday night, Holtby had an unwanted guest join him while he tried to get zen: a Flyers fan.
According to CBC, the fan yelled and cursed at Holtby the entire time.
“The preparation for Holtby – he does [these visualizations] every game,” CBC’s Glenn Healy said. “And we’ve seen it many many times. At home, it’s easy. The crowd loves him. In Philadelphia a little bit different. This guy stood behind him and screamed at him the entire time that Holtby tried to focus on this. As he went away, all kind of swear words and cussing. It seems to have worked early on.”
Flyers forward Michael Raffl scored on Holtby 57 seconds into the game.
Ugh. Philadelphia.
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