2023-10-16 10:25:22
PL Dubois forced his way out of two NHL organizations before his 25th birthday. He’s been part of two blockbuster trades, both at his request, and he knows that it’s upset some people.
“Everybody’s entitled to their opinion,” Dubois says over the phone in early October. “At the end of the day, it’s my life: I only live once. I only have one career.”
This is not the empty “YOLO” of a college student chugging a beer and jumping into a pool. It’s Dubois’ sincere philosophy. He understands that life is short and that NHL careers are fleeting, and he’s looked at life this way since a childhood split between Germany, Quebec and Atlanta. Now that Dubois is happy and comfortable in Los Angeles, he’s ready to talk about the road that led him there.
“I knew when I asked for my trade from Columbus, I’d get criticized,” he says. “I knew when this situation happened in Winnipeg, I’d get criticized. I had to look at it like, ‘Do I not want to get criticized but not do what I want to do … or do I want to get criticized but be happy with my life?’”
Dubois says he didn’t ask for his first trade from the Columbus Blue Jackets because of John Tortorella. They’re still in touch and the relationship is positive: Dubois says he recommended Tortorella to the Winnipeg Jets during the team’s coaching search in 2022. He also says he didn’t ask for his second trade because he couldn’t stand Winnipeg. He loved having his mom and dad close to him, became a regular at De Luca’s and appreciated getting to know the city.
But Dubois still asked to be traded — twice — and wouldn’t sign a long-term contract until this summer, the one which cemented his eight-year future with the Los Angeles Kings.
So, what gives? It’s an excellent question.
Let’s start from the very beginning.
You may not be surprised to know that Dubois was a stubborn, sometimes outright petulant child.
At the age of 3, Dubois broke the rules at his first skating lesson by taking off with a hockey stick instead of a pylon in his hands. He couldn’t understand his German-speaking instructor. Sometime later, Dubois sat on the bench for almost an hour at a public skate, refusing to join his family on the ice because the staff wouldn’t let him bring his hockey stick.
When he started playing competitive hockey, Dubois once responded to a painful loss by refusing to shake hands with the other team. His dad tried to cajole him, threatening the loss of hockey playing and video game privileges. Still, Dubois refused, so his dad held firm. Dubois then spent a full week begging for his PlayStation and his hockey stick. When he got those privileges back, Dubois became the ultimate rage-quitter of video games, often storming out of the room if his older sister Daphne managed to beat him.
In a story about how Dubois went from Columbus to Winnipeg to Los Angeles, it would be easy to stop here. Stubborn child grows into stubborn adult? Dubois is still intensely devoted to his convictions, yes, but that’s an oversimplified narrative.
Dubois eventually matured. Whereas he used to take delight in annoying his sister, earning nicknames like “Dennis the Menace” and “Little PL” — the latter delivered in just the right tone — Dubois grew close with his family as he got older. He makes Daphne laugh by constantly sending her memes and never exits a call without saying “I love you.”
PL Dubois and his sister Daphne. (Photo courtesy of Daphne Dubois)
Their dad Éric’s hockey career — first as a player, then as a coach — came with a measure of privilege and a great deal of transience.
This isn’t a footnote. Dubois spent a year in England as a baby and then grew up in Germany, the United States and Quebec, fostering a lifelong international curiosity. Dubois speaks English, French, a little bit of German and Italian and a few words of Russian. He flies to Europe for a portion of most summers, where he particularly loves shopping, high-end fashion and international cuisine. Even in the midst of a busy regular season, Dubois seizes every available off day: In December 2021, for example, he took his whole family dog-sledding in Banff, Alta. For Daphne’s birthday last season, he planned a weekend of shopping, exploration and Korean barbecue in New York City.
“I’m very lucky to have the life I have,” Dubois told The Athletic in April. “I don’t want to have regrets later in life and I think the only way you have regrets is if you don’t live to the fullest. Whenever there’s an opportunity that makes sense — obviously, the No. 1 priority is playing well, so I can’t do whatever I want — but whenever I have the opportunity to live life a little or discover something new, I try to do it. Because it’s tough to say but it could be over at any point.”
Before the 2021-22 season, Dubois changed his jersey number from No. 13 to No. 80 as a tribute to Blue Jackets goalie and close friend Matiss Kivlenieks, who died in a fireworks accident that July.
“Anything could happen,” Dubois says, reflecting. “Right now, I’m very fortunate with the position I’m in and I try to take advantage of it as much as I can.”
Dubois had already been traded to Winnipeg when Kivlenieks passed away, but there’s no doubt this perspective motivated him in his quest to pick the perfect place to continue his career.
What drove Dubois out of Columbus, though?
Dubois’ Blue Jackets career peaked during the 2020 postseason bubble. He was a dominant physical force in the qualifying round against Toronto, scoring a hat trick in Game 3 — including the winner in overtime — that put the Maple Leafs on the brink of elimination. Dubois was a force against Tampa Bay in the next round, too, and finished his postseason with 10 points in 10 games. To a casual observer, it looked like Dubois had arrived as a presence in the NHL.
Less than six months later, Dubois played one of the most disinterested-looking shifts in recent memory, getting himself benched against Toronto. Tortorella blew up at Dubois for his lack of effort, leading to Dubois’ eventual trade to Winnipeg.
But the seeds for Dubois’ exit were planted over a year before that shift. When he was 20, Dubois was part of a team meeting that made a massive impression on how he viewed his career.
It was September 2018. The Blue Jackets’ two biggest stars, Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky, had just informed the team that they would both pursue free agency when that season was over. Columbus’ first meeting of the year was a team-wide heart-to-heart about Panarin’s and Bobrovsky’s futures.
“It was eye-opening,” Dubois says. “There was so much honesty. A lot of courage. Everybody was saying what was on their mind. Then, at the end of the meeting, it’s, ‘All right, we have one goal and it’s to win. Everybody’s on board? Yeah! Now we go to work.’”
Even as the Blue Jackets held on to them past the trade deadline during a playoff push, Panarin and Bobrovsky were true to their word. In July 2019, Panarin left Columbus for the New York Rangers; Bobrovsky signed in Florida.
But not before the Blue Jackets swept the 128-point, Presidents’ Trophy-winning Tampa Bay Lightning. Panarin and Bobrovsky declared their intentions and Dubois watched as his team came together despite the outside noise. That left a mark.
Dubois, center on bench next to Artemi Panarin, clashed at times with then-Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella. (Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press via AP)
Even though a part of him hoped to sign a long-term extension the summer Panarin and Bobrovsky left Columbus, Dubois admits it never seemed realistic. Contract negotiations didn’t begin in earnest until 2020, before the postseason bubble. Then came Dubois’ monstrous performance against Toronto, his encore against Tampa Bay and the realistic expectation that his contract price had gone up.
There was also the matter of Columbus’ rebuild.
“I was looking at where I was in my career and where the team was going,” Dubois says. “I thought the most probable outcome would have been a three-year deal. That’s where it was going. Then I thought, after Year 3, what happens? Because then you’re one year away from free agency. I thought, ‘I’ve never really been able to decide where I want to play.’ I was still young so it was fine but I also knew that we were going to be in a rebuild for those three years.”
He says he saw the writing on the wall. The team was heading for a rebuild with or without him.
“That’s where the team was going and where they eventually went,” Dubois says. It was an idea he couldn’t get behind, so he signed a two-year contract in December 2020, getting himself to within two years of UFA status.
“To me, it was, ‘You only have one career. You only live once,’” he says. “If we’re rebuilding and not making the playoffs for the three years that I’m here, it’s going to be tough and frustrating.”
What about Tortorella?
“Torts and I had an intense relationship. At times, he went home and hated me. At times, I went home and hated him. But we were two competitors that both wanted to win and he knew that and I knew that. And I was lucky enough to grow up with a father that was a hockey coach and he told me that you can’t take anything personally because if a coach is pushing you, it’s because he wants you to become the best player that you can be.”
And the public dressing-down Tortorella gave him after that fateful final shift?
“If you didn’t play a sport or didn’t have a teacher or maybe even a parent that was really hard on you, you wouldn’t understand how it makes sense to yell at somebody and then, 20 minutes later, shake their hand and say ‘good game.’ But that was the relationship that Torts and I had. I think some people just saw what happened in Toronto, us yelling at each other, and thought we hated each other. Our relationship was complicated but there was always respect there and I think that’s the only thing that really matters.”
So Dubois got his wish. In January 2021, Columbus traded him to Winnipeg, where his dad was an assistant coach with the Manitoba Moose. The Jets gambled that Dubois’ parents’ home cooking would keep him happy. They were right about that.
They were wrong that it would keep him in Winnipeg. Dubois had seen Panarin and Bobrovsky dictate their futures on a team that won anyway. He went from a team on its way to missing the playoffs for three straight years to one that got there twice.
But the idea that he could control his future was firmly implanted.
“A lot of times, people have the mindset that ‘If he did thisit’s because he hated that.‘ But it’s not like that at all. I have nothing but great memories from Winnipeg. It’s about the next step in my life.”
Dubois calls it the biggest misconception about his journey through the NHL to L.A. He says it’s the one thing he wishes people understood: Yes, he wanted to move to Los Angeles but no, this doesn’t mean he didn’t enjoy the places that came before it. He says he’s grateful for his years with the Jets. He got to discover Winnipeg in a way that isn’t possible for a visiting player. Fans treated him well in various encounters throughout the city. It wasn’t uncommon for Dubois to become friends with a local restaurant owner and find they’d covered an extra beer on his tab.
And yes, there was the aforementioned obsession with De Luca’s.
“I would go to De Luca’s all the time and talk to the people there, have a coffee, maybe even a pizza if it was an off day,” he says.
That’s the warm and fuzzy version. An investigation of Dubois’ timeline in Winnipeg reveals the same warmth — but he consistently dodged a commitment to staying. From his first video call with Jets reporters in 2021, Dubois offered positivity and open-endedness in equal measure.
Asked whether he would consider staying in Winnipeg long term: “My dad has been here for four or five years and every time we’d come to play against the Jets, I’d always go out with my parents. I spent my quarantine here almost a year ago. It already feels like home.”
Dubois’ first partial season in Winnipeg was a poor one, with a two-week quarantine followed by two injuries. His 20 points in 40 games represented the worst point production rate of his career. Dubois responded by intensifying his offseason training and re-establishing himself in 2021-22, scoring 28 goals and 32 assists and, for a moment, it looked like Winnipeg had two first-line centres on the same roster.
Then Dubois’ contract expired and the rumour mill went to work.
“Montreal is a city he would probably … I can talk about it because he doesn’t have a contract at the moment — he’s a restricted free agent,” Dubois’ agent Pat Brisson, told TVA Sports in July 2022. “Montreal is a place, a city he’d like to play in. That’s all I can say about that.”
Speculation intensified as league sources confirmed the Jets and Canadiens had entered trade discussions. It reached a frenzy when Dubois attended the 2022 draft in Montreal — first in a booth with his agency and later with his bank.
But no trade came to fruition. Eventually, Dubois signed his qualifying offer — a one-year contract that seemed to signal his eventual departure. All Dubois had to do to fast-track his 2024 UFA status was file for arbitration when his qualifying offer expired in 2023.
Dubois’ contract came with a news conference via video call. He took the opportunity to address some of the rumours while leaving his long-term future very much in doubt. His agent’s comments were blown out of proportion, he said at the time, while clarifying that he had not asked for a trade and had no plans of holding out to get one. He was getting ready for his return to the Jets, he said, and was focused on winning.
“After this contract is up, then we’ll deal with it,” Dubois said at the time. “Next summer is next summer.”
It wasn’t long after Dubois arrived in Winnipeg that there were rumours linking him to the Canadiens. (David Kirouac / USA Today)
As for attending the draft in hopes of a hometown trade? Dubois was just having a good time with his dad. They had attended a few drafts together throughout Dubois’ childhood, and this one was only 15 minutes away from Dubois’ Montreal home. His agency, CAA, and his bank, RBC, each had box suites. Dubois visited them both.
“Being traded from my living room, 15 minutes away, or from the draft wouldn’t have made a difference for me. I just went there because I thought it would be a fun thing to do,” he says. “I understand it’s easy to see me there and do a ‘one and one equals two’ but sometimes it’s more complicated than that. Sometimes coincidences actually happen.”
The rumours about his intentions were frustrating, he says, while also acknowledging that his silence contributed to the speculation.
“People are going to say stuff about me that isn’t true but I have to bite the bullet because I’m doing it to myself,” he says. “It’s my decision that this is happening — I could sign a long-term deal and none of this would happen. Or I could do what I feel is right and get all of this. So that’s how that summer went. ‘One day, this is all going to be over.’ That’s how I saw it.”
Whatever was going on behind the scenes, Dubois had a challenge to face in 2022-23: returning to a Jets dressing room that wasn’t sure whether or not he had one foot out the door. When asked if that was difficult to do, Dubois reflects on the lessons he learned from the Panarin and Bobrovsky situation in Columbus. He says that every team has players on expiring contracts. His focus was on putting contractual distractions aside, like the Blue Jackets had done.
Dubois’ final season in Winnipeg was his best one: 50-plus games of dominant, first-line centre performance before he tapered off in the latter portion of the season. He was a massive part of the Jets’ Game 1 win against Vegas, with one goal and one assist, but was limited to two more points in the series’ next four games.
If he was playing so well, so dialled in on winning, and if the pizza at De Luca’s was so good, then why had he signed that one-year qualifying offer? Why did he go on to tell the Jets that the time had come to move on, providing a short list of teams with which he would sign a long-term deal?
“I think, where I was going in my career and in my life … I’m 25. I’ve said this before but eight years is a long time. I don’t know how I’m going to feel in three years. But I felt like, for me, L.A. was a city that I could be happy in for the eight years of the contract. I could be happy playing here. I could be myself here. It was a hard decision to make but, like I said, I would never talk poorly about Winnipeg or say I didn’t enjoy my time there because I did.”
So it wasn’t Winnipeg, then?
“That’s the main thing I would say if you asked me what I wanted people to understand: You can like two things at the same time. You can appreciate two different things at the same time. It’s not that you choose one so you hate the other. That’s what I think got misconstrued in the whole process.”
If Dubois’ “why” is “because he wanted to” then it’s important to understand what makes him happy in L.A.
It was Dubois’ mom Jill’s birthday last week. She and Daphne flew out to visit Dubois in Los Angeles. He took them out for dinner at Nobu, an exclusive and expensive sushi restaurant in Malibu. Adam Sandler was seated next to them. Rob Schneider was there. And a couple of tables over was one of his mom’s favourite “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
“I mean, yes it was cool for me but to see my mom and my sister almost pass out from excitement …” Dubois trails off. “It’s just small things like that.”
Los Angeles’ other amenities — warm weather and a close proximity to the ocean — still floor Dubois when he steps outside his front door. He’s thrilled to be able to go outside at any given moment and be a mile away from the ocean. He says the ability to fully disconnect from hockey makes him a better player when he shows up at the rink.
“It kind of feels like you’re on vacation but you know you’re not,” Dubois says. “You know you’re going to work the next day, putting your work boots on, and concentrating on hockey.”
Hockey players come from many different backgrounds. Some are farm kids who grew up throwing hay bales. Others come from major urban centres, prep schools or dedicated sports academies. Some, like Dubois, grew up in a travelling, international, hockey-playing family. L.A.’s restaurants, shopping and laid-back fashion speak to him.
It may be that the answer to why Dubois maneuvered his way to Los Angeles is simply because he could. By keeping his reasons quiet until now, he’s earned the rumour mill that comes with his years of silence on the matter. He’s not put off by that. He’s aware that he has his critics.
What he doesn’t have is regrets.
“The price to pay for what I did is to have people that I have no idea who they are and they have no idea who (I am) — they’ve never met you or barely met you, don’t know who you are as a person … people like that criticize you,” Dubois says. “When I retire at the end of my career, they’re going to forget about me and I’m going to forget about them but I won’t forget my journey. My family, my friends, we won’t forget about my journey. So the price to pay is you get criticized by people who don’t know you at all.
“But the outcome is you get what you wanted to do. You get the adventure, all of it. It wasn’t easy at times and I’ve been criticized a lot but I’d rather be happy and have my family and everybody around me be happy. It wasn’t always easy but I think it was worth it.”
(Top photos of Pierre-Luc Dubois: Harry How / Getty Images and Dave Sandford / NHLI via Getty Images)
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