Can the Washington Capitals Revive Pierre-Luc Dubois?
The biggest question after this trade that comes is can the Washington Capitals revive Pierre-Luc Dubois' offensive game and readjust him to becoming a natural top-six forward again. Yes, it has only been one bad season for Dubois where now it's really hard to actually get a read on what he can be. He could either become the player he was in Columbus and Winnipeg, or he could drop off further in route to a potential buyout scenario. There really is no range on what can happen, and it depends on the role and the willingness for Washington to redevelop some of his tools again so he can become an offensively involved player consistently.
We know Dubois can score, we know why he is an attractive trade candidate, particularly because of his innate scoring instincts and his ability to understand contact in board scenarios and being able to leverage pressure to his advantage.
Jack Han's workshops are always a must follow to really get a feel for players on a deeper level, especially with this being a recent episode where Han talks about Dubois, some of the struggles and issues in LA, and some of his best attributes as a player. The main problem is, how do you expect a marquee player on a marquee contract ($8.5M x 7 more years) to score when you're putting him on the 4th line? I understand why LA dealt with frustrations with Dubois, but if you're not giving him ice time, literally how do you expect the player to have success?
The other issue is, when Dubois was consistently placed in this bottom-six level role with LA for a heavy portion of the season, a lot of habits that weren't typically ingrained in him and weren't inherently noticeable became more noticeable. On the flip side, this makes me wonder if there could potentially be some early season struggles heading into Washington next year, based on some of those bottom-six habits built through LA. Some noticeable ones and Han mentions some of these in the video:
Han also mentions other marquee aspects in the video related to Dubois' board side play, swing aways instead of swinging to pucks and swinging to the middle, and being impactful coming up the dot lane as typical wingers would do. Chris Kreider is a very relatable example in the clips that were shown and how well Kreider could manipulate that ice and leverage play in counter attack transition scenarios. Dubois is similar in a sense, where he can dominate off the rush with his speed and his natural scoring instincts, which makes Dubois seem as if he is more of a winger.
My thinking in Dubois changed a lot when I saw this video, because initially I saw Dubois as a power forward style center who can dominate the middle of the ice. Not as much as I thought when realizing some of the off-puck routes that he takes and how he likes to control the walls to his leverage based on body position and gaining leverage in corner situations.
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A side-by-side comparison via JFresh on Twitter showcases the impact that Dubois had from 22-23 to 23-24, where we naturally saw a lot of Dubois' previous impact get shut down further from his down year in LA. It was a granted that the even strength and power play numbers would be down, but even the quality of his teammates didn't allow him to be a superior play-driver that we'd see more impact out of in Columbus/Winnipeg. Which makes me wonder even more now, does Dubois even adapt to the quality of his linemates that he has in Washington? There's a rabbit hole of questions that this trade leads me to and now makes me think that LA might have won this deal, at least in the short-term.
His role and ice time diminished to a bottom-six level center, so the quality of competition he faced led me to believe that he became slightly better as a shutdown forward, namely because he was adapting to wing a majority of that time.
However, his finishing got way worse and we saw a lot of deferring to teammates on passes, which isn't helpful given the dynamic, off-rush scorer, and instinctually driven offensive zone patterning to provide a team with depth in their offensive structure. Dubois is at his best as a naturally derived scorer given the opportunity to succeed, but also when he has players deferring to him on his passes, not the other way around. Given Dubois isn't necessarily a high-end passer to begin with, he has to be utilized in PP situations and 5v5 situations where players can defer to him. That's part of the reason how I'm curious to see Dubois adapt in Washington, given they have more players there who already like to defer less themselves and shoot more. Examples include Alex Ovechkin, Tom Wilson, Max Pacioretty, Dylan Strome, Hendrix Lapierre as just a few. Dylan Strome is a hybrid, but also fits those examples mentioned in the sentence before. Strome could be a fit for Dubois, especially if interchanging with Strome at that center spot since Strome has played wing numerous times before.
I don't and don't really like a fit with Connor McMichael yet as he hasn't shown an innate top-six play-driving ability yet with any sort of separating skill, but that's a possibility as well depending on Dubois' role. There were some slight inconsistencies analytically with Hendrix Lapierre, but him making a bigger jump in year 2 with Washington could help him blossom with a newcomer like Dubois.
That becomes another bigger question now, especially given based on analytics a lot of those players inside Washington's top-9 prefer to shoot more than deferring to linemates. So this could be another thing that could hurt Dubois and might limit scoring ability early in the season.
It just feels as if Dubois has more to give, and surely he expects way more of himself to do so as well. With professional athletes, there's going to be mental curves and adversity which Dubois will bound to adjust to, but this bad season could become the best thing that ever happened to him and could allow him to be an even better player in the coming seasons. Either way, it will be very interesting to see how Dubois adapts to another new team and we'll see if some of those habits he built in bottom-six ice time can change in Washington as well. Still a lot of potential for Dubois to make an impact, but it's going to have to be immediate and consistent.
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