Aliaksei Protas crouches down for his intermission interviews with Al Koken. Does it hurt? ‘A little bit, but for him I can do that. I can sacrifice myself.’

With great power comes great responsibility and apparently the same holds true for immense height.

Aliaksei Protas is one of the tallest players in the NHL at 6-foot-6. When he’s on skates, the Belarusian forward stands even taller, rising to nearly 7 feet tall. Protas’s size can be game-changing on the ice, but it can also create awkward moments off of it, such as filming intermission interviews in a cramped hallway with Monumental Sports Network’s Al Koken.

Koken is not blessed with Protas’s Giant genes, resulting in what appears to be a massive height difference when the two speak on television.

So, last January, Protas began crouching during the interviews, putting his head around the same level as Koken’s. It first began on January 24, 2025, after Protas scored his 20th goal of the season against the Seattle Kraken.

“You can stand, brother,” Koken told Protas in the interview, initially appearing to take the gesture as a rib. Koken subtly put a shoulder into the winger’s side, encouraging him to stand back up.

But it didn’t stop. And Protas employed the squatting strategy for the rest of the season.

He’s continued to do so during the 2025-26 campaign as well, and Koken has come to both surrender to the practice and appreciate the gesture.

“It’s becoming a bit now,” Alex Landestoy pointed out during the postgame show on October 14 after the Washington Capitals beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2 in overtime. “Did Al Koken grow? Did Protas shrink? This is a fun bit that you guys have, and Protas just doesn’t stop doing it, right?”

“Right, and he does it with a smile on his face,” Koken said. “He does it obviously to help me look a little bit bigger.”

He added, “Listen, I’m 5-foot-10. That’s not exactly short. So it goes to show you how big that boy is.”

When speaking to Protas at a recent practice, the thoughtful “made in a laboratory” star explained that not only was he worried about how Koken looked next to him, but he also noticed how it created problems for the rest of the crew.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m trying to make it easier for the camera guy,” Protas told RMNB. “So I’m kind of closer to Al, and I try to respect him, to get closer to him, so he feels more comfortable. I’m trying my best for him, you know? He’s a great guy.”

For a normal human, doing a squat for a minute straight while balancing with tiny knives on the bottom of their shoes would be excruciatingly painful and difficult — especially after exercising at their highest level.

“No, no, no,” Protas said.

But does it hurt to do so for that long?

“A little bit, but for him I can do that,” Protas said. “I can sacrifice myself.”

While Big Pro has come to do his interviews with Koken at eye level, his brother Ilya — “Little Pro” — has yet to learn the trick.

“I hope he passes that on to his brother Ilya because there’s no doubt in my mind I will be doing the same [Capitals intermission interviews] with an equally 6-foot-6 Ilya Protas,” Koken said. “I hope brother passes the word on. ‘If you talk to me, you gotta crouch down.’”