Matt Roy Takes Two Penalties in Eight Seconds After Referee Says He 'Showed Him Up Twice'

Matt Roy is the Washington Capitals defenseman coaches trust not to take penalties. On Wednesday night against the Philadelphia Flyers, he took two in eight seconds, and the second one came because, in his coach’s telling, he argued with the referee on his way out of the penalty box. The Capitals still won 5-2, and the sequence will probably be forgotten by the weekend, but it deserves a record precisely because of who Roy is: a player who took six minor penalties in 79 games last season managed two in a single shift of a game, and then explained it all with one memorable line from the official.

What actually happened in the third period?

Two penalties, one goal, and a round trip to the box. Roy was sent off for roughing after punching Flyers rookie forward Porter Martone twice in the head near the end boards, RMNB reports. Martone is part of a young Flyers group that has already produced a debut for Cole Knuble this season. Martone appeared to sell the second punch, throwing his head forward, which frustrated Roy, and on the telecast he could be seen hitting the penalty-box glass with his stick.

The Flyers needed eight seconds of the power play. Matvei Michkov scored, narrowing Washington’s lead to 3-2 with 10:16 remaining, and the goal released Roy from the box. As he skated back toward the Capitals bench, he voiced his displeasure with the officials and was given another two-minute minor, this time for unsportsmanlike conduct, abuse of officials. Philadelphia went straight back to the power play. The NHL.com postgame log records the same sequence in the official timings: Roy off for roughing, the Michkov goal, then Roy barking at the officials as he left the box and going right back for unsportsmanlike conduct.

What did Spencer Carbery say?

He passed on the referee’s reasoning in seven words. Asked by RMNB’s Katie Adler after the game what led to the abuse-of-officials minor, Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery responded: “He said that he showed him up twice, not once, twice.”

That is worth unpacking, because “showing up” an official is one of the NHL’s unwritten offences. It does not mean disagreeing with a call. It means disagreeing in a way that embarrasses the official in front of the rink: the gesture, the sarcasm, the lingering stare on the way past the bench. Carbery did not say which of Roy’s actions the referee counted as the two instances, and the referee has not spoken publicly. What is on the record is Carbery’s relay of the explanation, and the fact that the second penalty arrived within seconds of the first expiring, which suggests the official’s patience was already spent before Roy opened his mouth.

Why does this stand out for Roy specifically?

Because his penalty record reads like a player who never loses his temper. RMNB notes that Wednesday’s minors were Roy’s first and second of the season, and that last season he was whistled for just six minor penalties, 12 penalty minutes, in 79 games. That is a gentlemanly effort so remarkable, the outlet notes, that it earned him a single fifth-place vote for the Lady Byng Trophy, the award for sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct. Wednesday’s four penalty minutes in an eight-second span meant Roy accumulated one-third of his entire previous season’s penalty minutes in a single sequence.

Context makes the contrast sharper. Roy is a 31-year-old defenseman and alternate captain who signed a six-year, $34.5 million deal with Washington in 2024 after six seasons with Los Angeles, and he is one of the team’s best penalty killers, a role that rewards exactly the discipline he lost on Wednesday. A player in that role taking a retaliatory roughing minor and then an abuse-of-officials minor is not just a bad shift. It is a bad shift by the last player on the roster you would expect it from.

Did the Flyers make Washington pay?

Only once, and then the moment passed. The first power play produced Michkov’s goal eight seconds in, cutting the lead to 3-2 and briefly putting the Capitals in a stressful situation, as RMNB puts it. The second power play, the gift-wrapped one, produced far less. Broad Street Hockey reports it did not do a lot in its first half, that Flyers coach Rick Tocchet called a timeout to give the first unit a breather, and that the Flyers nearly scored before Capitals goaltender Logan Thompson stopped Trevor Zegras with his glove.

Then Washington did what good teams do after surviving their own player’s temper. The Capitals killed the second penalty and scored consecutive goals through Jordan Kyrou and Alex Tuch to seal the game 5-2. Kyrou’s second goal of the night came soon after the penalty expired, and Tuch’s empty-netter finished it. The Flyers, who had been given two power plays in eight seconds of game time, ended the night with nothing more than a closer scoreline than they deserved.

What does this say about the officiating?

That the line between arguing and showing up an official is drawn in real time, and players cross it at their peril. RMNB’s own game coverage called the roughing call a joke and the second call soft, which is the home-team blog’s view and should be read as such. The official record is less sympathetic: two minors, both served, no further discipline announced, and a coach who repeated the referee’s explanation without disputing it on the record.

The NHL has fined and suspended players for far worse this season, from the stick jab that cost a player $5,000 after it was downgraded from a spear to the boarding major that deepened Ottawa’s blue-line crisis. Officiating controversies have produced stranger nights elsewhere this month, including three disallowed goals in a single Canadiens game. Roy’s night belongs at the other end of that scale: a discipline story, not a safety story. Nobody was hurt, nobody faces a hearing, and the only thing damaged was Roy’s remarkable penalty record and, briefly, his team’s lead.

What happens next?

A back-to-back in Nashville on Thursday night, and a question for Carbery about whether Wednesday was an aberration. Roy’s record says it was: one bad sequence from a player whose season, until Wednesday, had been penalty-free. The Flyers, meanwhile, head home having shown they can punish a mistake in eight seconds flat, which is a useful thing to know about a young team even in a loss, and a step on from an eight-game winless start to the season. And the referee’s line, “showed him up twice, not once, twice,” will live longer than the game itself, because it captures something every player knows and every fan has seen: in hockey, as in most workplaces, it is rarely the first complaint that gets you in trouble. It is the second one, delivered on your way out of the room.