We all like to pompously think we're proficient at handling any and every emergency a helicopter can throw at us. What pilot does not? Now here's a very experienced pilot who, let's be honest, screwed up what *should* have been something easily handled. But he failed to get the throttle off and failed to release his external load! Why? We don't know.
Perhaps he was disoriented and incapacitated by the spin. That Huey cockpit is a looong way out in front of the mast. Maybe he just froze; wouldn't be the first time an experienced pilot did that. Like I said, we just don't - and won't - know.
Let this accident be a lesson to you - there are plenty of them to learn from it! Do good preflights. And maybe you really aren't as good as you think you are. Or me either. Man, I hope I never have to go through what that guy did.