You can’t say you didn’t see him coming. It’s Aliaksei Protas (6′,6″, 250 lbs). He’s hard to miss.
By the Numbers
30
Goals
36
Assists
76
Games played
16
Minutes per game
On-ice percentages
54%
Shot attempts
52%
Expected goals
62%
Actual goals
Isolated Impact by HockeyViz
About this visualization: This image by Micah Blake McCurdy of hockeyviz.com shows how the player has impacted play when on the ice. At the top of the image is the team’s offense (even strength at left, power play at right) and at bottom is the team’s defense (with penalty kill at bottom right). In each case, red/orange blobs mean teams shoot for more from that location on the ice, and blue/purple means less. In general, a good player should have red/orange blobs near the opponent’s net at top, and blue/purple blobs near their own team’s net at bottom. The distributions in middle show how the player compares to league average at individual finishing, setting up teammates to score, and taking and drawing penalties. The number at center is Synthetic Goals: a catch-all number for the player’s impact.
Player Card by All Three Zones
About this player card: This image from Corey Sznajder of All Three Zones shows how the player compares to league averages in different microstats in the defensive, neutral, and offensive zones. Blue bars mean the player has a higher rate in that statistic compared to league average, and orange means a lower rate. The numbers are Z-scores, also known as standard deviations, indicating how far the number is from league average, where more than two standard deviations means the player is on the extreme edge of the league.
Player Card by Evolving Hockey
About this player card: This card from Josh and Luke of Evolving Hockey compares the player to league averages based on their impact on on-ice statistics. GAR means “goals above replacement,” where “replacement” means an average player called up from the AHL. xGAR is the same figure but assuming league-average goaltending. The numbers at top are the player’s percentile ranks overall and then for offense and defense alone.
Player Overview by NHL Edge
About this visualization: The NHL’s advanced statistics program, Edge, tracks player and puck movement. At left are the player’s numbers in various statistics along with the average number for that same stat among players of the same position and the player’s percentile rank in it. At right is a radar chart for various statistics, where the bigger the shape the better the player performs in those measures.
Fan Happiness Survey
About this visualization: At three times during the season, RMNB conducted an open survey with readers, asking the following question for each player: “On a scale from 1 to 5, how HAPPY are you to have this player on the team?” The numbers above show the average score for the player in each survey period.
Slavoj Žižek on Protas
The more you praise Protas’s largeness, the smaller you become. You’re a corporate sloganeer, just working for free.
Peter’s Take
Hell yeah, it’s the Pro recap. What a player. Everyone loves Protas. For example, past me. Here’s what I said one year ago:
I’d wager to say, after Ovechkin, Protas is the player most held back by the team’s roster problems. That’s frustrating when I think about 2023-24 in hindsight, but it’s encouraging for me thinking to the future. I’m now entering year four of “Protas is the future of the Capitals,” and if it doesn’t happen this time I’m giving up, and I’ll have to watch him have a 60-point season in Calgary or something.
The future has arrived. Protas got his 60 points — 66 actually, thank you very much — right here in DC. He had his breakout season because he added three crucial ingredients to his game: 1) offense, 2) minutes, and 3) linemates. We’ll talk about number one last. For minutes, Protas jumped from just 13.7 minutes per game to 16.5, a solid top-six number considering he got basically no power-play usage (ten minutes total). Linemates? His most common on-ice partner was Pierre-Luc Dubois, the most valuable player on the team, in my opinion.
But offense is where you’ll find the biggest dig against Protas. His individual goal-scoring was driven by a 21.1 percent shooting percentage — eighth highest among 370 full-time NHL forwards. That’s almost four times his career average prior to 2024-25. The diagram below, from HockeyViz, shows how much more Protas scored compared to league average at different spots on the ice. Red means more goals from that spot, blue means fewer goals, but don’t worry about blue because there is none.
Nine goals better than expected. Effective from the faceoff circles and from the slot. Positively lethal from danger-close. Protas is very, very unlikely to repeat that kind of individual finishing, but that’s okay. His game is more than shooting — he’s an elite passer, for example; I’d like to see him hooking up Ovechkin more — he was the primary assist-getter on eight Ovechkin goals this season. (Man that was a disaster of a sentence. Sorry. Please don’t diagram that.) My point is that he’s never been a shoot-first player. Maybe he should become one. Only Brandon Duhaime created fewer rebounds than Protas this season. There’s an untapped vein of scoring available here, as you’d expect from a player who does everything well except fit into small spaces.
Which reminds me. When I’m thinking about ways for Protas to keep improving, I keep thinking about this one scene:
Pro on RMNB
- Brothers Ilya and Aliaksei Protas played together in the preseason. It’s going to happen.
- On how much credit he gives to Logan Thompson for his success: “Nothing, like zero. Zero. Absolutely zero.” (uh, click it.)
- Protas stepped up with Ovechkin out and nearly led the league in five-on-five scoring.
- He won a game over Columbus pretty much single-handed.
- He set a career high in points — in 43 fewer games.
- Aliaksei Protas deserved power-play time. He didn’t get it.
- Ovechkin loaned him a car once so he could get to Hershey. He’s never going to Hershey again.
- On the amount of his 2024 contract extension: “Isn’t that too much for me?” (Reader: It is not.)
- On if he thought he’d ever score a 30-goal season: “Maybe Xbox, like NHL 25.”
- In April, Protas suffered a skate cut to his left foot. Week-to-week status. He missed the rest of the regular season.
- He returned for Game 5 of the first round.
- Carbery intended to use him everywhere. Stipulating five-on-five, I assume.
Aliaksei Protas scores first career playoff goal in second game back from skate-cut injury
Your Turn
How much of Protas’ breakout is a credit to playing with PLD? Can he still excel without him? And who comes off the PP if Protas comes on?
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