During Monday night’s game against the New York Islanders, goaltender Braden Holtby left his net and headed for the bench. That’s common practice if there’s a delayed penalty against the opposing team–except there was no penalty.
“Maybe Braden Holtby’s just getting overly confident,” the Islanders commentators joked. “Islanders haven’t had a shot in thirteen minutes. And all of a sudden–I don’t know what he saw…He just takes off!”
When the #isles haven't had a shot in 14 minutes pic.twitter.com/nHvVIzUsfb
— Eyes on Isles (@eyesonislesFS) November 27, 2018
Holtby was almost to the bench when suddenly he realized his mistake. Luckily, the Islanders took even longer than Holtby to notice and didn’t take advantage of the empty net.
If the Isles had committed a penalty and the Caps had possession of the puck, Holtby would head to the bench so that a sixth attacker could come on, because if an Isles player touched the puck, the referee would stop play before they could score. As far as we can tell, no penalty was committed and none of the four referees held up their hands to signal a delayed penalty call.
The Islanders commentators took a guess at what was going through Holtby’s mind: “Listen, I’m not getting enough work, so let me just work the legs.”
It certainly was an impressive (and hilarious) pivot from the Holtbeast.
This isn’t Holtby’s first fumble of the season, but thankfully, his more humorous mistakes have been in the net. In the game against the Montreal Canadiens on November 1, Holtby wiped out during a stoppage in play.
