A younger Ilya Protas would have hung up the phone on someone trying to tell him what would happen in the April of his 20th year.
Protas, who turns 20 in July, didn’t just make his NHL debut for the Washington Capitals on Wednesday in Toronto. He did it while centering a line between his older brother, Aliaksei, and standout veteran winger Tom Wilson. And he did it after earning the call-up to the NHL in his first professional season, amid a campaign for the Hershey Bears in the American Hockey League that made him the highest-scoring rookie in the league.