During their myriad of off-season moves, the Capitals picked up American winger Brandon Duhaime, who is on a two-year, $1.85M AAV contract. While he is sure to bring grit to the Caps, he’ll certainly bring humor, especially if he gets into a practical joke war with any of his teammates the way he did with Wild teammate Marc-Andre Fleury.
It started when Duhaime said Minnesota teammate Fleury was 50 years old in an interview (Fleury is actually only 39 years old). So as every mature hockey player does, Fleury decided to steal Duhaime’s clothes and shoes one day. Not backing down, Duhaime replaced Fleury’s hockey stick with a cane.
Think the one-upping would stop after Duhaime was traded to the Avalanche? Not so much.
After the trade, Duhaime toilet papered Fleury’s car when the Wild and Avs faced off against each other again in the regular season.
Fleury finally put his foot down with the penultimate response after the TP incident. He planted flowers on the hood of Duhaime’s car, put a for sale sign on the car, stole the tires off it and locked the tires away in the parking garage. Fleury left a note on the for-sale sign, suggesting Duhaime should post a public apology if he wanted the tires to his car back. Duhaime finally caved.
Amusing off-ice antics aside, Duhaime sounds like a perfect fourth-line player and would likely pair well with current Caps fourth line center Nic Dowd. Duhaime spent most of his time last season in the defensive zone (45%) and the majority of his shift starts were in the defensive zone. He seems like a solid puck-handler with only 10 defensive zone giveaways last season with the Avalanche, and had more than double that amount in takeaways (24). He isn’t afraid to throw his weight around either, notching the second-most hits (208) of any Avalanche player last year.
Duhaime is a 6’2”, 200-lb 27-year old born and raised in Florida. He will be entering his fourth full year of NHL play this upcoming season. Duhaime will have some familiar faces in Washington, since he’s been long-time friends with new Capital Jakob Chychrun.
Duhaime was drafted by the Minnesota Wild in 2016. He made his NHL debut during the 2021-22 season. Through 80 NHL games his rookie season, he scored 17 points (6g 11a) and averaged just over ten minutes of ice time each game.
Duhaime was traded from the Wild to the Colorado Avalanche in March 2024. He was an upcoming UFA, and the Wild were running out of cap space and lineup space. He played out the rest of the season with the Avs, scoring 5 points (1g 4a) and tallying one playoff goal.
Despite only three full seasons in the big boy league so far, Duhaime has not been afraid to drop the gloves. Over his three full NHL seasons, he’s fought Will Lockwood (FLA), Will Borgen (SEA), Liam O’Brien (ARI), Jakob Lauko (BOS), Mason Marchment (DAL), Evander Kane (EDM), Barclay Goodrow (NYR), and Michael Pezzetta (MTL), to name a few. Duhaime has 234 total PIMs across his NHL career, more than half of which occurred during his first NHL season in 2021-22 (122 PIMs). So I’m sure other teams will be aware of his presence on the ice.
Duhaime will wear #22 with the Capitals.
👀 👀 #mnwild pic.twitter.com/SoXtiXy2eR
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) April 4, 2024
Mess with the bull you get the flowers 🌸💀 #mnwild https://t.co/ZN3CxBuhRC pic.twitter.com/7wWZ7vtQ3z
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) April 9, 2024
