This year’s Washington Capitals are no strangers to lighthearted rituals, from choreographed pre-game handshakes to their postgame locker room speeches and Player of the Game chain, but sometimes the fun comes at the expense of an unsuspecting teammate. During a recent episode of the Caps’ podcast The Line Change, Logan Thompson and Aliaksei Protas gave insight into the team’s propensity for pranks and who, exactly, is most likely to be behind them.
One of Thompson’s own pranks made it onto the Capitals’ social media last week when Matt Roy emerged from the locker room with his helmet labeled with his name and a smiley face.
“Thommer’s jokes getting old,” remarked Tom Wilson.
On another episode of The Line Change, Connor McMichael noted that Thompson was a regular target of pranks — as well as an instigator himself.
“I think a lot of guys like messing with LT,” he said. “He likes messing with guys, and then they give it back to him.”
Logan Thompson did his best, but none of his pranking managed to distract Aliaksei Protas during his media scrum this morning. pic.twitter.com/RZcl63PVbP
— Katie Adler (@katieEadler) March 4, 2025
Thompson admitted he enjoyed occasionally stirring the pot, but told Capitals Radio Network’s Katie Florio that he sometimes took the blame even when he wasn’t behind a practical joke. He instead pointed fingers at Wilson and Brandon Duhaime.
Asked about the biggest culprits on the team, he said, “It’s easy to go to Tom. I think I also get framed a lot. I think Dewey’s a big instigator.”
“Dewey, yeah,” Protas added, “We’ve heard stories from Minnesota, right?”
“Dewey’s a big prankster, but he likes to frame other people,” Thompson explained. “So he’ll prank himself too, to be like, ‘Oh no, it happened to me.’”
Duhaime went toe-to-toe with Marc-Andre Fleury, one of the NHL’s most notorious pranksters of recent NHL history, while playing for the Minnesota Wild last season. The prank war culminated when, after Duhaime was traded to the Colorado Avalanche, Fleury took the tires off his car, chained them to a column, put a “For Sale” sign on his windshield, and planted a bed of flowers on his hood.
Now with the Capitals, Duhaime is one of several troublemakers on the roster. Thompson and Protas recounted Wilson’s retribution after Thompson pulled a joke on him. Thompson started the back-and-forth in early February, using the same name-and-smiley-face label trick he’d later repeat on Roy. Evidence of the prank made it to social media when Capitals players shared their picks for the then-upcoming Super Bowl.
When Wilson retaliated, he upped the ante.
Thompson: Well, I just got pranked before the break and I had to go home with no shirt and no shoes.
Protas: No shoes.
Thompson: No shoes, no shirt, yeah. From the rink. Freezing cold day.
Protas: A couple of days before the break, we had practice and Tom put like four bottles of water in Logan’s crease and just made it a complete mess in there, so he couldn’t…
Thompson: Well, because I put Tom on his helmet. Tom, smiley face.
Florio: I was going to ask about that next. That’s on the internet. Was that you?
Thompson: That was me. Very innocent, harmless prank, but then I got it 10 times worse.
Protas: Yeah, there was like four bottles of water all around the crease, just snow; it was like terrible.
Thompson: And then my sandals were in a bin full of water and they threw it in the freezer overnight so my sandals were frozen. So I still don’t know where my sandals are.
Protas also named Andrew Mangiapane as an undercover jokester on the team.
“He’s sneaky,” he said. “He can throw somebody else under the bus.”
And at least someone on the team is capable of getting away with mischief scot-free — Thompson told Florio he still didn’t know who was behind a prank on Roy at the beginning of the season.
Thompson: Even at the start of the year, when Roysie was hurt after the first game, I don’t know who was doing it, but someone set up all his gear to look like Ovi’s. They gave him yellow laces. They gave him a tinted visor. I don’t know who did it, but every day someone kept messing with Roysie.
Protas: Roysie is in the conversation too (for biggest pot-stirrer), maybe, for a bit.
Florio: Really?
Thompson: Yeah, we have a lot of guys who undercover like to stir of the pot. As you said, I’m out there. But there’s guys who like to frame people, too. There’s lots on the road and stuff. We really don’t know who’s doing it, so we’re still trying to figure it out. I don’t know who’s doing it.
Protas: The guys are sneaky good, you know?
While occasionally frustrating in the moment, the Capitals’ pranks are ultimately all in good fun, forming part of the tight-knit bonds that help this year’s roster connect both on and off the ice. Thompson had nothing but good things to say about the team’s culture, highlighting what Washington’s leadership core has developed.
“With this team, I think that just shows the leadership that was here before us with with O and Tom and John, Dowder, those guys have made it really easy to come in here as a first-year guy,” he said. “They do a really good job at accepting you. Everyone’s always different, no one’s going to be the same, but when you get in that dressing room there’s no cliques. I mean we say there’s a Russian clique, but there really is no clique.
“That’s just a funny way to say it, but that really anyone can hang out with anyone on this team. Everyone’s included.…I think it just shows how the leadership did a really good job at just keeping everyone connected and fitting in.”
And sometimes, just sometimes, fitting in means losing your sandals in a bucket of ice.
