The annual meeting of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s selection committee is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. After the meeting is concluded, the committee will reveal the 2025 class of HHOF inductees at 3:00 pm.
Several notable players are set to become eligible to be inducted for the first time, including likely first-ballot choices Joe Thornton and Zdeno Chara. Another familiar name who will join them as a first-time-eligible player is longtime Washington Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby.
Holtby has not yet officially announced his retirement from professional hockey, but has not played since spending the 2021-22 season with the Dallas Stars. To be eligible for HHOF voting, you must not have played during any of the three preceding years before the poll, and Holtby qualifies.
The 35-year-old netminder hasn’t generated much HHOF buzz. And he may never do so after playing just 12 NHL seasons. However, his overall resume suggests more voters should seriously consider his candidacy.
A win record shared with only Martin Brodeur
Holtby had a tremendous 2015-16 season on a dominant Capitals team that would ultimately win the Presidents’ Trophy as the league’s top regular-season team. The Holtbeast was a big reason for that success, posting an absurd 48-9-7 record with a 2.20 goals-against average, a .922 save percentage, and three shutouts.
The 48 wins tied a regular-season record previously held by one of the game’s greatest goalies, Martin Brodeur. Brodeur, a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 2018, won 48 games for the New Jersey Devils during the 2006-07 campaign. Holtby’s achievement is made even more impressive by the fact that he made 12 fewer appearances (66) in his year than Brodeur did (78) in his record-setting season.
Since Holtby matched Brodeur’s mark, Winnipeg Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck has come closest to matching the 48 wins, falling one shy with 47 this past season in 63 appearances. Hellebuyck won the 2025 Hart Trophy as NHL MVP after his 47-12-3 campaign. Since 2015-16, only six goaltenders have recorded over 40 wins in a season, including Holtby again (42), Hellebuyck for the first time (44), Sergei Bobrovsky (41), Cam Talbot (42), Pekka Rinne (42), and Andrei Vasilevskiy (44).
After winning his 40th game during the 2016-17 season, Holtby would also become only the third goaltender in league history to record at least 40 wins in three consecutive seasons, joining Brodeur (2005–08) and Evgeni Nabokov (2007–10). The following season, in 2017-18, Holtby became the second-fastest NHL goaltender to record 200 career wins behind Ken Dryden, a 1983 HHOF inductee.
Hockey Hall of Fame-worthy trophy cabinet
Since the Vezina Trophy changed to its current format, voted on by the thirty-two NHL general managers, 11 of the 19 HOF-eligible winners have not been inducted into the HHOF. Three past winners, Holtby, Tuukka Rask, and Carey Price, will become eligible this year.
Among those 11 goalies, a surprising 10 of them never won the Stanley Cup in their career as a starter or backup. Holtby cannot say the same, leading the Capitals to the 2018 Stanley Cup and finishing third in Conn Smythe Trophy voting as playoff MVP behind teammates Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov.
The lone goalie to win a Vezina Trophy and a Stanley Cup, yet still not be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, is longtime Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas. Holtby and Thomas have also won a Jennings Trophy, but Thomas, who only played in parts of nine NHL seasons, shared his trophy in 2009 with teammate Manny Fernandez, while Holtby won his in 2017 alone.
Holtby has something else Thomas cannot claim, which is a gold medal for his country at a major tournament, and the HHOF significantly considers national team achievements. Holtby was part of Team Canada’s roster at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey that won gold. He saw pre-tournament action against the United States before Price manned Canada’s crease as their number one.
If Holtby never gets an induction, he will be the only goalie not in the HHOF to have won all of the big four: Vezina Trophy, Jennings Trophy, Stanley Cup, and a gold medal.
Vezina Trophy winners who have not been inducted into the HHOF
Holtby is also a 2010 Calder Cup champion with the AHL’s Hershey Bears, a five-time NHL All-Star, and was voted to the NHL’s First All-Star Team in 2016 and the Second All-Star Team in 2017.
Statistically, one of the best goalies in the Salary Cap Era
While Holtby is hurt by his statistics at the end of his career, his overall numbers still compare well enough to elite Salary Cap Era (2005-06 to present) NHL goalies.
Over the course of his career, Holtby racked up 513 NHL appearances. In those games, he posted a 299-143-50 record with a 2.59 goals-against average, a .915 save percentage, and 35 shutouts. The top goals-against average among goalies with a minimum of 200 games played in the cap era, 2.28 goals per game, belongs to Rask. The top save percentage, .921, belongs to Tomas Vokoun.
From a purely advanced statistics perspective (2007-08 to present), using Evolving-Hockey’s goals saved above expected, Holtby saved 48.4 more goals than expected during his career. A total that compares well to a likely 2025 Hall of Famer in Price (51.5), a 2022 Hall of Famer in Roberto Luongo (49.4), a future Hall of Fame candidate in Vasilevskiy (47.6), as well as names like Rask (29.0), Nabokov (27.4), Vokoun (25.3), and Thomas (23.9).
All of the above math is purely regular-season-based and does not even account for the fact that Holtby is arguably the greatest postseason goaltender of his era. Among all goaltenders with at least 50 playoff appearances since 2007-08, Holtby has the second-best save percentage (.926), goals-against average (2.13), and goals saved above expected total (34.3).
Best playoff goalies since the 2007-08 season (min. 50 GP)
Lundqvist, despite his dominance, never successfully raised the Stanley Cup. The legendary Swedish backstop was a member of the 2023 class of HHOF inductees.
Holtby’s playoff brilliance also extends even deeper into the hockey history books, as his .926 save percentage ranks tied for seventh among all-time goalies that have played in at least 20 playoff games. When you increase the games played minimum to 50 games, it is the second-best all-time postseason save percentage behind just Tim Thomas (.933).
Comparison to recent Hall of Fame inductees
There are 36 total goaltenders already inducted into the HHOF, and the only one solely from the Salary Cap Era is Lundqvist. The next will likely be Price this year. But then: who else is left to represent the 2010s era of goaltending that has achieved the level of silverware and had a more significant overall impact on the decade than Holtby? The only arguable answers are Marc-Andre Fleury, Rinne, and Bobrovsky.
Rinne never won the Stanley Cup, the Jennings Trophy, or a gold medal. Bobrovsky didn’t win his two Cups with the Florida Panthers until 2024 and 2025. Many consider Fleury a lock for a first-ballot induction, but he didn’t make a single Stanley Cup Final start for the Pittsburgh Penguins in their back-to-back championships runs in 2016 and 2017.
Holtby out-dueled Fleury in the 2018 Stanley Cup Final when the Capitals took down the Vegas Golden Knights. In that series, he also had one of the most iconic moments in recent playoff history, known as “The Save,” which has been a staple of playoff highlight reels since.
During the same era of playoff goaltending that saw Holtby record 34.4 goals saved above expected, Fleury gave up 4.8 more goals than expected.
The HHOF has shown a propensity for honoring the best players of specific eras, even if they aren’t perfect superstar fits; hence, Mike Vernon and Tom Barrasso being inducted in 2023. Neither goalie’s stats jump off the page at you, but they won Stanley Cups during the 1990s and have similar trophy cases to Holtby’s.
Unlike Holtby, Vernon never won a Vezina Trophy, a gold medal, or was named a First Team All-Star. Barrasso also never won a gold medal.
Holtby will likely remain a long shot despite all the evidence provided that he should receive more consideration. While chances are he’ll never make the HHOF, he at least deserves a spot in the discussion for what he brought to the NHL in the 2010s.
The Lloydminster native will also always have a spot in the Hall of Fame for really great dudes. He was the first Capitals player to participate in the DC Pride Parade and gave a speech at the Human Rights Campaign’s National Dinner, among other constant charitable acts.
Long live the Holtbeast.
