From THN's Archive: Pointing North

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Pointing North - Mark Larkin - Nov. 26,  2015 - Vol. 75, Issue. 08

PIERRE-LUC DUBOIS COULDN’T catch his breath. It wasn’t just the frosty air of the Winnipeg winter seizing his lungs. When he was on the ice, competing in NHL games, doing the thing he’d done better than anything else his whole life, he suddenly struggled to keep up. It alarmed him.

What’s that adage about moving being one of the most stressful experiences of a person’s life? It was February 2021, and Dubois was in the midst of doing just that. After requesting a trade from the Columbus Blue Jackets, who’d drafted him third overall in 2016, he’d gotten his wish Jan. 23 in the blockbuster swap that sent him to the Jets and Patrik Laine and Jack Roslovic to the Jackets. The circumstances around the deal were anything but ordinary. Laine spent more than a week in Ottawa waiting for the U.S. embassy to process his work visa, while Canada’s COVID-19 quarantine restrictions forced Dubois to isolate for 14 days. He couldn’t even see his parents, who call Winnipeg home because his father, Eric, is an assistant coach with the Jets’ AHL affiliate in town. Dubois couldn’t set foot in the same room as his new teammates. All he could do was watch games and try to acquaint himself with teammates over the phone or in virtual meetings. He didn’t debut with the Jets until Feb. 9, a full 17 days after the trade.

Not only was his typically chiselled and powerful 6-foot-2, 205-pound frame not in game shape by that point, but he also wasn’t in a great place, physically or mentally, before the trade. A COVID outbreak among the Blue Jackets in November 2020 led to Columbus closing its training facilities and keeping Dubois home for three weeks, during which doctors instructed him and his teammates not to work out for fear of the virus’ impact on the heart. Realizing he didn’t see himself in Columbus long-term, Dubois made the trade request in early January, before the season started. And that added another layer of emotionally draining tension in the weeks leading up to the deal. For Dubois’ agent, Pat Brisson, the trade request was unprecedented for a player as young as Dubois. “Usually, these situations, a player is at least 26 or 27 toward the end of a second contract or closer to free agency, and in this case, it was one of the first times I had to deal with a player of this caliber who requested a trade right out of his entry-level deal,” Brisson said. “So that was very difficult. He was younger and less experienced, and it was a very tough challenge to conquer.”

When the trade finally happened, it cleared a mental hurdle. But Dubois, who calls physical fitness a major component of his heavy power-forward game, was a shell of himself by the time he joined the Jets, trying to catch up and transition to a new team when his body was more behind than it had ever been in his hockey life.

He lasted two games before sustaining a lower-body injury and landing on injured reserve. He had blips of production once back but endured easily the worst season of his career, managing just nine goals and 21 points in 46 games, an 82-game pace of 16 goals and 37 points. In his three NHL campaigns prior, he’d averaged 23 goals and 55 points per 82 games while never missing a contest. “If I had a good year and I talked about it, people would think, ‘Aw, it’s fine, just a tough year,’ but since I had a bad year, it kind of sounds like an excuse, you know?” Dubois said. “I felt like, the whole season, guys were at Game 30 physically, and I was at Game 10. Guys were at Game 50 physically, and I was at Game 20. I couldn’t catch up, even if I did sprints. Then you go overboard and get tired the next game. I was always chasing the game last year, physically. Once that starts, then it’s mental. Your physical attributes aren’t there as much, you make one mistake, you try to compensate, and then it’s just a snowball effect.”

Piling onto Dubois’ nightmarish arrival in Winnipeg: the pandemic alienated him. He’s a player who enjoys being part of an NHL market’s community, going to public settings like restaurants, interacting with fans and participating in events at schools. All those perks were off the table in 2020-21.

He played in an empty Canada Life Centre – a building many consider the NHL’s loudest when it’s packed to capacity. He couldn’t even bond with his new teammates in a traditional manner, and they recognized how much of a struggle it was for him. “You deal with quarantine, you deal with an injury, you deal with a totally new team, a new system, not actually getting to have meetings, doing it over Zoom,” said Jets center Mark Scheifele. “That whole thing is so tough. You don’t have dinners out with the guys. You have your player lounge, but you don’t get to actually go and get to know guys, going out with them, going on the road trips.”

The adjustments didn’t end there. Dubois also experienced a night-and-day coaching change, shifting from fire-breathing taskmaster John Tortorella in Columbus to down-to-earth players’ coach Paul Maurice in Winnipeg. Dubois’ relationship with Tortorella drew lots of media attention during their three-plus seasons together. ‘Torts’ held his No. 1 center to a high standard and was often caught on camera screaming at him during games. Tensions came to a head with a benching that led to Dubois playing three minutes and 55 seconds in what turned out to be his final game in Columbus.

IT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TIMES I HAD TO DEAL WITH A PLAYER OF THIS CALIBER WHO REQUESTED A TRADE RIGHT OUT OF HIS ENTRY-LEVEL DEAL– PAT BRISSON, DUBOIS’ AGENT

Blue Jackets' Kirill Marchenko Off To Red-Hot Start Stop me, if you have heard this before.

The truth, however? Dubois and Tortorella weren’t enemies. Dubois is a big, nasty customer who can be spurred to do great things on the ice by someone who pushes him. The hockey world witnessed his potential explode firsthand in the 2020 playoff bubble tournament when he manhandled the Toronto Maple Leafs and scored a hat trick, including the OT winner, in Game 3 of a series that Columbus ended up winning.

The coaching change, then, wasn’t necessarily a jump from “bad fit” to “good fit” in Dubois’ mind. “Torts’ communication was direct, basically there’s no walls,” Dubois said. “When he was on somebody, everybody knew it. As a player, that’s one thing you want from your coach, honesty. You don’t want your coach telling you you’re playing well and the next thing you know, you’re playing 12 minutes. You want your coach telling you, ‘You’re playing like s---,’ if you are, and, ‘That’s why I’m not playing you.’ A lot of people think I despised him or I didn’t like him, but actually, it’s the opposite. I respected everything he did for me because he was honest with me all the time.”

Dubois struggled to adjust to the bench-boss change last season not just because of their opposite personalities but also because of their contrasting structures and coaching styles. Dubois is careful to clarify that doesn’t mean Maurice’s system is better or worse or that he isn’t also an honest communicator. He’s merely different than Tortorella, Dubois explains, in almost every way – right down to how Maurice approaches video-review sessions. Tortorella’s teams play a tight-checking lunchpail game, while the Jets, armed with more high-skill players, trade chances in a wide-open style, relying on star goalie Connor Hellebuyck to bail them out of high-danger situations.

I FELT LIKE, THE WHOLE SEASON, GUYS WERE AT GAME 30 PHYSICALLY, I WAS AT GAME 10. I WAS ALWAYS CHASING THE GAME– PIERRE-LUC DUBOIS

Mapping out all the obstructions to Dubois’ success in Year 1 as a Jet, it’s easy to see why he struggled so badly. It was also understandable in the summer when Dubois and Scheifele each went full Nostradamus predicting a monster bounce-back season for Dubois. Scheifele pointed out Dubois’ superb physical condition and said, “We all expect a great year from him.” Dubois described himself in September as “a boxer who lost a big fight just wanting to get back in the ring for another round.”

Nailed it, fellas. Dubois, 23, tore through the NHL early in 2021-22. He equalled last season’s total of nine goals by Game 15 and had 15 points in that span. In 5-on-5 play, he was smashing every one of his career highs in per-60-minutes production: goals, points, shots, shot attempts, high-danger chances, individual scoring chances, rebounds and expected goals. Dubois graded out top-10 among all NHL forwards in 5-on-5 scoring-chance generation in the early going.

The beastly version of Dubois, the one that earned him Vincent Lecavalier comparisons leading up to draft day in 2016, is back. “He’s a menace to play against,” Scheifele said, ruminating on his battles with Dubois before they were teammates. “We saw him against (Auston) Matthews in that playoff in the bubble. He was dominant. Looking at him, you’re going, ‘Jesus, this guy’s just waiting for a breakout season.’ He skates great. If you get him with the puck below the goal line, good luck taking it off him. He is a strong boy.”

As Brisson puts it, Dubois is “again the player he was in the bubble against Toronto.” Having a normal training camp and the opportunity to bond with teammates, interact with fans and play in a full rink surely helped. So did returning to his natural position of center. During Dubois’ ugly 2020-21, Maurice experimented with Dubois as a left winger, but he was back driving the play down the middle to start 2021-22. “It’s the coach’s decision, we’re paid to play, but I played center the last five years, I got drafted as a center, I made a name for myself as a center, I’ve had the best games of my career as a center,” Dubois said. “It’s always been a gift and a curse that I can play every forward position. It doesn’t mean it suits my game as much. I think I’m a centerman. That’s where I play my best hockey. I can play on the wing just as much as any centerman can play on the wing because, technically, it’s a simpler position than center.”

With his body and mind back to optimal condition, Dubois has bulldozed the notion that Winnipeg’s trade was a bust. He’s even worked his way onto the 2022 Olympic radar, assuming he cracked the “long list” Canada had to submit to the IIHF in October, which included approximately 50 players. Because Dubois plays a bruising game and can fit at any forward position, he has an advantage over roster-bubble players who play the type of high-skill games that can only work on scoring lines. Imagine Dubois in a fourth-line wrecking-ball role with, for instance, Sean Couturier and Ryan O’Reilly.

Whether Dubois makes that team or not, he’s much happier on his current one in Winnipeg than he was a year ago. He’s an RFA this summer, and while no contract talks had commenced as of press time, Dubois still offered a clear sense of his priorities on his next deal. “The most important thing is winning,” Dubois said. “Some guys won’t go down that route, but, later on in your career when you retire, you’ll be happy you won compared to having the best contract that you wanted. So it’s worth it meeting halfway.”

If the Jets are a winning outfit in 2021-22, Dubois is more likely to re-sign on a long-term deal. If he does, he should finally get a moment to do what he couldn’t last season: catch his breath.

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