Over the last two seasons, Aliaksei Protas has been one of the NHL’s best five-on-five goal-scorers, lighting the lamp 37 times — 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, when he was called up to the NHL for the Capitals’ final four games of the regular season.
Ilya played exclusively on the team’s second power-play unit, receiving 9:43 of ice time total — about a quarter of the time Big Pro received in 76 games (36:12) during the entire 2025-26 season. Ilya’s first NHL goal even came on the man advantage, banging home a rebound past Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Arturs Silovs.
Ilya Protas’s first NHL goal
Aliaksei, who now owns the Capitals franchise record for the most goals without a power-play tally to start a career (68 and counting), wrote about the bizarre phenomenon in a Belarusian language blog post for BetNews, where one wonders if the smiley faces he shares try to hide that his pride is maybe a smidge hurt.
“It’s funny that Ilya scored his first goal on a power play,” Aliaksei wrote as translated by Google Translate. “And in five years in the NHL, I still haven’t scored a single power play goal. 🙂 Well, everyone has their role. It’s great that my brother was given a spot on the special teams and he took advantage of the opportunity. Well done, I’m very happy for him. I hope they continue to trust him on the power play. Maybe one day they’ll give me a chance too. :)”
While the lack of power-play opportunities seems like a statement from coaches about Aliaksei’s offensive ability, Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery explained in January that the decision is anything but.
“He’s a big body, so he can play the netfront and cause some issues in there,” Carbery said. “He has great hands, so he can be a threat whether it’s a passing or attacking the net threat from the inside, puck recoveries, (he’s) 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.
“Now the reason why you haven’t seen him consistently on the power play is he logs a lot of minutes,” Carbery continued. “He’s 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’t worth the squeeze even though he may think it is and want it to be because everyone wants to play the power play.”
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..
“Honestly, my expectations and reality were right on target,” Aliaksei said in the blog post. “I had no doubt Ilya would succeed. He’d done so well in the AHL, so I was confident he’d be just as successful at the NHL level. And that’s basically what happened.
“[Ilya’s NHL debut] went well for my brother overall,” he added. “And 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’t 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’m very happy for him and wish him continued success.”
