You keep saying that and it is NOT true. Holtby did not suck, royally, or otherwise during the regular season. He had a one-month slump (mid-February through mid-March) period. That is all. Through the first half of the season, he and Ovi were the reasons that the Caps were at the top of the Metro division. Grubauer couldn't buy a win to save his life. Holtby, despite not having the stellar numbers that he did the years before, could and did.
He faced more high-danger shots than any other goalie in the league and had a horribly porous defense in front of him and yet was still managing to stop enough pucks to get the wins for the Caps on the defensive end (while Ovi did his part on the offensive end). In mid-February, he slumped. It lasted through mid-March. When he came back from his reset, he posted similar numbers to Grubi through the rest of the season, and once he was unbenched in the Playoffs, he's been great.
Oh, and he never "threw teammates under the bus." He made one comment in one after-game that was entirely appropriate. Compare this with six years of never taken credit for his great goaltending and giving credit to everyone else on the team.
Starting Grubi game 1 was reasonable. Game 2 was not.
You make some good points.
Holtby did only make 1 comment that I am aware of in terms of blaming the Caps' defensemen publicly.
And he was indeed playing behind a terrible defense for much of the year. Before Kempny got here, things were real bad on the blue line. Bowey wasn't working out.
I'm going to offer some counterpoints:
Grubauer outplayed Holtby behind the very same defense, which demonstrates that Holtby really was bad, and could have been better.
Grubauer was bad in October and part of November. Starting on November 24th, he ranged from very good to excellent for the rest of the season. If the wins weren't there after that, then that was mostly by chance and mostly factors other than him.
Holtby wasn't just bad from mid February to mid March. He was a .910 in January (when Grubauer was .941). I think many of us knew he was off his game as early as January - when he had a GAA of 2.83 - which is far from where he's been the past few years. (again, it's not all on him)
Grubauer was .923 and 2.35 GAA on the season. Holtby was .907 and 2.99.
Also, Holtby gave up 6 goals to the Penguins on February 2nd. He was a complete disaster in that game and by that time we all knew something was very wrong. He was flustered, frustrated, out of position, leaning the wrong way, and flat out misplaying the puck. All of this was extremely uncharacteristic. He had almost always been Mr. Cool prior to this. It was alarming IMO, and at that time many of us in the Caps forum knew something was wrong - two weeks before you say he started to slump.
November 18th was the last time in the regular season Holtby held a team to fewer than 2 goals. You will not find a streak like that in his entire career. It was bad.
Lastly, I think you are downplaying how bad he was at his worst. He wasn't just bad. This was not merely a typical slump. He was a friggin train wreck and a head case. His GAA was 4.62 in February. He was so bad that as a Vezina caliber goalie, he was benched and actually agreed with it (credit to him - but it was obvious).
Anyway, for those reasons I think Trotz benching Holtby for two playoff games is reasonable, and I think that also reasonably means the Caps #1 goaltender has some culpability for the two losses that started these playoffs. I do not think he should get a pass for the first two playoff losses just because he was so unreliable recently that Trotz didn't start him. The fact that Holtby has played well since then cannot change this because no coach has the luxury of hindsight.
