Not only is Brandon Duhaime a bona fide checking-line forward in the NHL, but he’s also becoming an inspiration across the world.
Friday, two players from the KHL team Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg, Roman Gorbunov and Vladimir Galkin, did their best “Doggie” impersonation inside their locker room.
Galkin, the goaltender, put his goalie stick inside the jersey collar of Gorbunov, the team’s leading goal-scorer, and walked him around the room like a dog. Of course, there’s barking. Their teammates were amused.
On the team’s Telegram account, Avtomobilist wrote, “Washington vs. Avtomobilist’s pregame ritual 😁,” per a Google translation.
Gorbunov and Galkin’s antics were, of course, a direct play off John Carlson and Duhaime’s dog walk two nights before as the Capitals prepared to play the St. Louis Blues.
Imitation, you see, is the sincerest form of flattery.
Late last week, 106.7 The Fan’s Sports Junkies asked Duhaime to explain why he got on all fours and transformed into a junkyard dog.
“Yeah. I mean, not much to it,” Duhaime said. “The tunnel’s kind of been an ongoing joke with our team and just a fun place to be. I don’t know, heat of the moment, it got reckless in there. So that’s all I got.”
To make the bit work as intended, Duhaime said that he had to have “full commitment on that one, for sure,” which surely he accomplished.
“I think everyone’s kind of in on it,” he said. “I think really anything goes in that tunnel, to be honest with you. So it’s a lot of fun.”
And now that fun is going international.