{"id":654342,"date":"2026-05-20T12:05:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T12:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/654342\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T12:05:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T12:05:29","slug":"aliaksei-protas-has-zero-power-play-goals-in-five-seasons-little-brother-ilya-protas-scored-one-two-games-into-his-nhl-career-its-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/654342\/","title":{"rendered":"Aliaksei Protas has zero power-play goals in five seasons. Little brother Ilya Protas scored one two games into his NHL career: \u2018It\u2019s funny\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last two seasons, Aliaksei Protas<\/a> has been one of the NHL\u2019s best five-on-five goal-scorers, lighting the lamp 37 times \u2014 good for the 31st most in the league. That success at evens has not yet translated into regular power-play time, though, which was not a problem for his younger brother, Ilya Protas<\/a>, when he was called up to the NHL for the Capitals\u2019 final four games of the regular season.<\/p>\n

Ilya played exclusively on the team\u2019s second power-play unit, receiving 9:43 of ice time total \u2014 about a quarter of the time Big Pro received in 76 games (36:12) during the entire 2025-26 season. Ilya\u2019s first NHL goal<\/a> even came on the man advantage, banging home a rebound past Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> goaltender Arturs Silovs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ilya Protas\u2019s first NHL goal<\/p>\n

Aliaksei, who now owns the Capitals franchise record for the most goals without a power-play tally to start a career<\/a> (68 and counting), wrote about the bizarre phenomenon in a Belarusian language blog post for BetNews<\/a>, where one wonders if the smiley faces he shares try to hide that his pride is maybe a smidge hurt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny that Ilya scored his first goal on a power play,\u201d Aliaksei wrote<\/a> as translated by Google Translate. \u201cAnd in five years in the NHL, I still haven\u2019t scored a single power play goal. \ud83d\ude42 Well, everyone has their role. It\u2019s great that my brother was given a spot on the special teams and he took advantage of the opportunity. Well done, I\u2019m very happy for him. I hope they continue to trust him on the power play. Maybe one day they\u2019ll give me a chance too. :)\u201d<\/p>\n

While the lack of power-play opportunities seems like a statement from coaches about Aliaksei\u2019s offensive ability, Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery explained in January<\/a> that the decision is anything but.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a big body, so he can play the netfront and cause some issues in there,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cHe has great hands, so he can be a threat whether it\u2019s a passing or attacking the net threat from the inside, puck recoveries, (he\u2019s) strong on the puck back, and (can) cut back and hold onto it. Those are a lot of tools there that fit well onto a power play.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow the reason why you haven\u2019t seen him consistently on the power play is he logs a lot of minutes,\u201d Carbery continued. \u201cHe\u2019s a big body. We felt like, even this year after he has the breakout year offensively, we used him on the power play, and he may disagree, we felt like it may affect his five-on-five and his penalty-kill minutes, which we rely on, and we need him to be 100 out of 100 in those two departments. So if he does play the power play and it takes away from those two areas, we feel like the juice isn\u2019t worth the squeeze even though he may think it is and want it to be because everyone wants to play the power play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond the trace amounts of sibling rivalry about power-play minutes, Aliaksei was beyond thrilled to play on the same line as Ilya and see how much success he had in his first NHL call-up..<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, my expectations and reality were right on target,\u201d Aliaksei said in the blog post. \u201cI had no doubt Ilya would succeed. He\u2019d done so well in the AHL, so I was confident he\u2019d be just as successful at the NHL level. And that\u2019s basically what happened.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Ilya\u2019s NHL debut] went well for my brother overall,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd in the very next game against Pittsburgh, he scored a hat trick (of points). I knew what Ilya was capable of, of course, but I still didn\u2019t expect him to perform so well that night. He did a great job, played with confidence. He showed that his excellent season in the AHL was no fluke. I\u2019m very happy for him and wish him continued success.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the last two seasons, Aliaksei Protas has been one of the NHL\u2019s best five-on-five goal-scorers, lighting the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-654342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}