The rookie prank was going to come eventually. On Saturday, Ryan Leonard was pranked by his Washington Capitals teammates into wearing Alex Ovechkin's yellow skate laces.
As part of a season long prank war, Leonard took the ice at MedStar Capitals Iceplex wearing the skate laces. Leonard didn't even realize it was Ovi style.
"Looks good," said Alex Ovechkin in a video posted by the Caps.
"No it doesn't," Leonard responded.
Leonard would explain more to Monumental Sports Network's Tarik El-Bashir.
"They put my skates the other way (in the locker stall) so I couldn't see the laces. Guys were just laughing. (Ovi) said I had a good day today."Ryan Leonard
The yellow skate laces prank apparently dates all the way back to at least 2019. In practice the pranksters usually target a young buck that's Russian. Such is the case when Alex Alexeyev and Ivan Miroshnichenko wore yellow laces during development camp.
In the occassion of Miroshnichenko, players got help from the equipment staff so that the target of the prank would not have enough time to switch the laces out before the on ice session.
Alexeyev, Miroshnichenko, and Leonard have done it and previous other Caps players that have done it too include Sergei Fedorov and Ilya Kovalchuk.
The lines at practice were pretty familiar
Ovechkin-Strome-Beauvillier
McMichael-Dubois-Wilson
Mangiapane-Eller-Leonard
Duhaime-Dowd-Protas
Raddysh, Frank
Chychrun-Carlson
Sandin-Roy
Alexeyev-TvR
McIlrath-Bear
Thompson
Lindgren
Gibson
Spencer Carbery had a lot of praise after the practice for Anthony Beauvillier, Trevor van Riemsdyk and Brandon Duhaime.
On Beauvilier, "A swiss army knife type player. But I feel like the mental part of, when the intensity gets ratcheted up, when there become situations, he's very even keel in those moments."
On TvR, Carbery said, "We needed more from multiple guys on our backend with the loss of Marty Fehervary for the season. And I thought TvR was a guy that stepped up big time and elevated his game."
Finally on Duahime, Carbery would say, "He's so positive, brings so much joy on a daily basis for a six month season which goes a long, long way. ...You know what appreciate about Dewey? This year, I feel like he's gotten significantly better as a player. He's worked on his game."
Game 1 between the Capitals and Carolina Hurricanes to begin the second round is on Tuesday night from Capital One Arena on ESPN. We are still awaiting the game time and the rest of the series schedule.