Aliaksei Protas left the ice Monday night and stepped onto the Washington Capitals’ bench.
Aggravated about missing a late scoring chance, Protas slammed the door closed — loud enough that it could be heard in the upper levels of Capital One Arena — and hung his head in frustration. After scoring 30 goals last season and starting this campaign with four goals in five games, Protas has scored just once in the past month. His assist Monday night, on defenseman Matt Roy’s goal in Washington’s win over the Los Angeles Kings, ended a run of six games without a point.
Most concerning for the Capitals, beyond the offensive drought, is that Protas just hasn’t looked like himself in recent weeks. The 6-foot-6 forward’s skating, work ethic and defensive instincts are the hallmarks of his game, the elements that carried him through his first three professional seasons before his scoring took off.
“I do think he’s fighting it a bit, and not just with the puck and offensively,” Coach Spencer Carbery said Monday morning. “Some of the areas that we look at — from his reads, penalty kill — just have been a little bit off. … It’s not just the goals. It’s his whole game.”
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Some regression was expected after Protas scored on a blistering 21.1 percent of his shots last season; Protas’s previous career-best shooting percentage was 8.8. This season, he is at a more reasonable 12.5 percent, which probably is closer to his true level.
Carbery doesn’t want Protas spending too much time focused on what he did last season.
“Last year, it’s been a blessing and a curse. It’s created an expectation,” Carbery said Tuesday. “He’s a 30-goal scorer in the NHL, which is an accomplishment that not a lot of players reach. A 30-goal scorer is really, really impressive. So now he has that in his head, rightfully so. He did it. Now he’s got to live up to that and feel like he has to do that. That’s his bar, and even exceeding that to do even better. That’s a slippery slope for a player like him.”
The scoring chances are still coming for Protas — his 39 individual chances at five-on-five rank third on the team, according to Natural Stat Trick. A drop-off in his finishing while he’s still generating scoring chances isn’t cause for major concern, given the hard-to-sustain rate at which he produced last season.
“It’s not really about points right now. It’s not the main focus,” Protas said. “It’s about getting the quality of my game back, you know? It’s just night after night, being able to find a full 60-minute performance. The chances are there. It’s going to be even more when I play a solid, quality game. It just wasn’t there for a couple weeks, but hopefully, get it back soon.”
Protas’s defensive abilities have long been among his biggest strengths. As one of the tallest players in the NHL, he plays with a long stick and typically uses it to win battles and break up passing sequences on a nightly basis. Some of that defensive prowess has been missing recently, which has Carbery’s attention far more than the offensive drought.
“Scoring is a part of his game and he’s able to make plays, he generates two-on-ones, penalty kill opportunities, breakaways like he got [Monday] night,” Carbery said. “Could’ve had another breakaway, and he’s upset that he fumbles the puck on it or it bounced over his stick or whatever happened. But there’s 50 other plays in the game that I’m worried about him doing a really good job with. Trying to keep his focus on that.
“He’s a great 200-foot winger that can skate, that is intelligent, that’s on the right side of the puck, that defends really, really well, that can check the puck back on the forecheck. There’s so many things that have nothing to do with scoring that he can positively affect the game.”
Those details are what Carbery has been hammering home with Protas as he works through a stretch that Carbery described as a “funk.” Carbery was quick to point out that it is common for young players to go through slumps, and Protas is still just 24.
But while the Capitals are without center Pierre-Luc Dubois, one of their most important defensive forwards, getting Protas back to the caliber of player he has shown he can be is crucial.
“Just starts from hard work. It starts from — every play matters, the details of the game,” Protas said. “That’s what it is mostly now. … [Points are] not the main focus. It’s going to come soon. But the quality of the game right now is the main focus.”
The post It’s not just the lack of goals. Aliaksei Protas’s ‘whole game’ is off.
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