UNIONDALE, N.Y. — Practice wasn’t supposed to begin for another 20 minutes Saturday afternoon, yet there was Braden Holtby, looping around a faceoff circle on the north end of the ice at Nassau Coliseum, chatting with goaltending coach Mitch Korn.
Holtby had missed the Washington Capitals‘ game the previous night with an illness, watching his replacement, Philipp Grubauer, and the rest of his teammates eke out a 4-3 victory over the New York Islanders in Game 2 of the teams’ best-of-seven first-round playoff series from the bowels of Verizon Center.