diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index a6967c538ab..0621f116fbb 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -82,7 +82,8 @@ Release 0.21.0 - Unreleased
    HBASE-1925  IllegalAccessError: Has not been initialized (getMaxSequenceId)
    HBASE-1929  If hbase-default.xml is not in CP, zk session timeout is 10 secs!
    HBASE-1927  Scanners not closed properly in certain circumstances
-   HBASE-1934  NullPointerException in ClientScanner (Daniel Ploeg via Stack)
+   HBASE-1934  NullPointerException in ClientScanner (Andrew Purtell via Stack)
+   HBASE-1946  Unhandled exception at regionserver (Dmitriy Lyfar via Stack)
 
   IMPROVEMENTS
    HBASE-1760  Cleanup TODOs in HTable
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/HRegionServer.java b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/HRegionServer.java
index c5855ce46c4..084311844b5 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/HRegionServer.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/HRegionServer.java
@@ -439,7 +439,7 @@ public class HRegionServer implements HConstants, HRegionInterface,
         // Send messages to the master IF this.msgInterval has elapsed OR if
         // we have something to tell (and we didn't just fail sending master).
         if ((now - lastMsg) >= msgInterval ||
-            (outboundArray.length == 0 && !this.outboundMsgs.isEmpty())) {
+            ((outboundArray == null || outboundArray.length == 0) && !this.outboundMsgs.isEmpty())) {
           try {
             doMetrics();
             MemoryUsage memory =