Pierre-Luc Dubois has spent much of the season racking up assists (13 in 24 games) and making things easy on his linemates, but he’s rarely been in the spotlight himself. Saturday night, however, Dubois’ game-breaking plays for the Washington Capitals made the difference in their 6-5 win over the New Jersey Devils.
Dubois registered two points on the night, a goal and a primary assist, for his third multi-point game of the season, while a hustle play late effectively ended the Devils’ comeback attempt.
Despite his reputation elsewhere as a malcontent and lazy player, Dubois has proved himself as selfless and hardworking in Washington under Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery, doing all the little things to win.
Dubois first got on the stat sheet Saturday with a heads-up assist to Connor McMichael in the second period while the Capitals were on a four-on-three power play.
After McMichael’s first shot was blocked, Dubois gathered in the rebound. Instead of shooting himself, he slid the puck back over to McMichael, who continued moving further into the slot for an easy one-timer. The Capitals scored twice on the four-minute power play after Dylan Strome got high-sticked in the face again, turning a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 lead.
Later, Dubois scored what ended up being the game-winning goal in the third period, finding open ice after a hustle play by Aliaksei Protas behind the Devils net.
After Dubois won a faceoff clean at center ice, Big Pro hustled into the offensive zone where he forced a turnover by goaltender Jake Allen. Dubois, noticing Protas’s hustle, found a soft spot on the ice where he fired a one-timer into the empty net. Dubois’s goal gave the Capitals a 6-4 lead and came 10 seconds after Taylor Raddysh scored. It would end up being the game-winner.
But Dubois would seal the victory in another way, too. After New Jersey scored one goal with the goalie pulled, the French-Canadian centerman made sure they would not score another. With 12.8 seconds remaining, Dubois moved his legs as hard as he could to beat Jack Hughes in a foot race, negating what would have been an icing call.
Capitals players on the bench slammed their sticks against the boards in appreciation.
Postgame, Carbery called Dubois’s hustle at the end of the game an “incredible example of what this group is all about” and called him “a f***ing gamer.”
Dubois’ teammates, too, celebrated his efforts against New Jersey. Connor McMichael awarded him the Capitals’ player of the game chain, while Charlie Lindgren praised him unprompted in his postgame press conference.
“You can’t say enough good things about that guy,” Lindgren said. “He came in and he’s played some really good hockey for us. He’s matched up against usually the best lines and I just love his game. I love his grit.”
Though Dubois’ performance Saturday may have been flashier than most of his games so far, he’s proven a consistent part of the Capitals’ success over his first season in Washington. During the offseason, Carbery said he was excited for the challenge to unlock Dubois to his fullest potential. Now past the quarter mark of the season, Dubois has turned into one of the best two-way pivots in the league — a possibility Carbery hadn’t considered when the team first acquired him from the Los Angeles Kings.
“I did not know [he was this good of a two-way player],” Carbery said in late November. “I knew the size, the strength, faceoffs were a little bit down last year, but I knew he could own the circle there. And I knew from actually from my time in Toronto, when he was in Winnipeg, I remember the matchups a little bit there with Auston (Matthews) and he would go head-to-head, and there were some fiercely competitive games where I walked away from those games going, ‘Whoa, that’s a really competitive kid that thrives in a one-on-one matchup with one of the best players in the world.’ So I remember that part. I didn’t realize, and I’m coming to learn how intelligent of a player he is and how well he defends and reads situations, especially against the best players in the world.”
Part of Dubois’s deep understanding of the game could be chalked up partially to his dad Éric, who is an assistant coach with the AHL’s Manitoba Moose.
Rather than limiting him to offensive deployments, Carbery has regularly played Dubois against teams’ top lines. He praised Dubois’ ability to read his opponents before they make a move.
“Honestly, and he knows, he’s so intuitive,” Carbery continued. “And this is probably the best thing about really good two way centermen, is they know exactly what the most skillful players in the world want to do and what areas they want to get to and how they want to get the puck. So you’ll see certain clips and they will go to the spot where Auston Matthews wants the puck or Nathan MacKinnon wants the puck. And that tells me he’s onto it and knows what those players want.”
With Dubois on the ice, the Capitals have outscored opponents 21 to 15 at five-on-five, owning a 56.4 expected goals percentage. And while they’ve had slightly fewer scoring attempts than their opposition (337 to 326), they’re dominating in both scoring chances (166 to 135) and high-danger chances (81 to 55). Even further, per MoneyPuck, Dubois’s line with Connor McMichael and Tom Wilson has generated 13 expected goals over 23 games — third-most in the NHL and the most of any line on the Capitals — though he’s recently swapped lines to play alongside Protas and Raddysh with Alex Ovechkin out injured.
The only major downside of Dubois’ season has been a lack of goals: he’s had just two five-on-five tallies and three total goals in 24 games. But Dubois’ low goal production is likely thanks to bad luck — he’s posted an 8.6 shooting percentage, significantly below his career average of 12.4 percent.
“I do wish that some were going in for him,” Carbery said last month, shortly before Dubois earned his first five-on-five tally for the Caps. “I think everybody wants to score and wants to produce. His setups and assists and his distribution and zone entries and the plays that he’s making, I do wish some goals were going in. But the great thing I think about where sports in general, but our sport is going, and this is how I feel like it helps ease Doobie’s mind because everyone now has all the analytics and they know it and they understand it, for the most part.
“So his expected goal rate and all that stuff, everybody knows it. They’re like, ‘Damn, this guy is controlling play, he’s playing against the best competition every night, he’s doing this, this and this.’ So I think that gives players a little bit more, it used to be you used to open the newspaper and you’d go like every team stat lines were in there and you’d go ‘this guy’s good, this guy’s not doing well, this guy’s,…’ It goes so much deeper than that. So I think it gives him a little bit of confidence and put his mind at ease. He’s had a phenomenal start to the year and he should be really proud of the way that he’s playing, regardless of whether pucks are going in the net for him.”
While he could have more points and goals, Carbery has been in Dubois’s ear, letting him know he’s performing well and keeping his confidence sky high.
“He’s such a smart guy that he knows he’s playing well, but I like to reassure him of the fact that that’s what we’re seeing,” Carbery said. “That’s what management is seeing and that’s what the rest of the hockey world is seeing as well.”
