Pierre-Luc Dubois & the LA Kings first year together could hardly have gone worse. Now what?
Pierre-Luc Dubois & the LA Kings first year together could hardly have gone worse. Now what?
I don't think I was as wrong about anything this NHL season as I was about Pierre-Luc Dubois and the Los Angeles Kings. When LA traded for Dubois, I loved the move; pairing what I believed to be a high-level 200-foot centerman with Anze Kopitar and Philip Danault down the middle sounded like a recipe for a bear of a team to match up with down the middle in a playoff series.
Heading into the season, I picked LA to come out of the Western Conference come the postseason. Instead, for the third year in a row, the Kings lost to the Oilers in the first round. Two years ago, it took seven games; last year, six; this year, just five. In my defense, I didn't necessarily believe LA was the best team in the West, but I wanted a different pick than the standard (Oilers, Knights, or Avalanche), and I liked what the Kings had to offer. To reiterate, I was big wrong.
Dubois played in all 82 games, scoring 16 goals and giving 24 assists for 40 points. His only worse season by point production was 2020-21, when he was traded from Columbus to Winnipeg midseason, only played in 46 games because of injury, and was just 22 years old. This was his first season of an eight-year contract signed last summer, worth $8.5 million per year.
The package to acquire Dubois included Gabe Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, Rasmus Kupari, and a 2024 second round pick. In Winnipeg, Vilardi did his best to maximize LA's regret at dealing him. Vilardi obly played in 47 games, but he scored 22 goals and added 14 assists. That amounts to 0.77 points-per-game, compared to 0.49 for Dubois. In other words, within one season, Dubois no longer appears the best player involved in the trade.
Not only did Dubois struggle to score in his first season in LA, but the defensive impacts he was supposed to bring didn't come with him either. Per Micah Blake McCurdy of HockeyViz.com, the Kings were 14% better than league average at defending at five-on-five without Dubois on the ice. With him, they were just 3% above league average.
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Simply put, Dubois failed to deliver the impact expected of him at either end of the ice. So, now, the question begs: What should LA do with him? And it's one the Kings will have to answer urgently.
Dubois has a full no-movement cause that will kick in on July 1st and will last until '28-29, when it becomes a 15-team no trade list before becoming a 10-team no trade list for the final two years of the deal. In other words, if LA is to trade Dubois, it will likely have to happen before July 1, but then the more pressing question becomes is he tradable at all?
The answer seems, more probably than not, no. He has a history of demanding trades—first to leave Columbus, then to get out of Winnipeg. He to a destination he wanted and signed a maximum-length extension once he got there, only for it to go disastrously. Why would a different team want in on him now? And, from the Kings' perspective, why trade a star* player at the nadir of his value?
That brings us to the question of a buyout, where once again there is urgency. Dubois turns 26 on the 24th of June, at which point a buyout would go from costing a third of his owed salary to two-thirds (the logic behind the league rule being that younger players have more of an opportunity to recoup the money they've lost in the buyout with future earnings).
If LA did pull the trigger on a buyout, it would cost $1.131 million in real dollars through 2037-38. Against the cap, it would be a million and change, before jumping to $2.53 million in 2026-27, between $3.7 and 3.9 million between 2027 and 2030, then $2.8 million in 2030-31, then $1.131 thru '37-38. It's expensive and a bit shocking to even consider, but also...maybe workable?
That leaves the Kings' buyouts as two-fold: buy out Dubois or hope he can improve to live up to the role he was acquired for. But even that is complicated by the current uncertainty of the LA front office. As THN's Austin Stanovich noted earlier this week, both Rob Blake and Luc Robitaille may well be fired in the coming days. That raises the question of whether LA will have a front office in place in time to buy out Dubois before he turns 26.
So, what's the answer? Well, neither option will be easy, but my advice? Rip the band-aid off, buy out Dubois, and start fresh. It seems likely to be best for all invovled.
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