Pierre-Luc Dubois notched his second multi-point game of the young season on Wednesday, scoring a goal and recording an assist in the Washington Capitals‘ 5-3 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins — Alex Ovechkin‘s final home opener.
After the nationally televised game, Dubois was a guest on TNT, where his post-game attire inspired some unhinged questions and brought out his wit and sarcasm.
Dubois’s interview with TNT after the Capitals’ 5-3 victory over the Penguins
“Oh, wow,” Paul Bissonnette reacted immediately upon seeing PLD, rocking a cut-off shirt on camera. “Holy geez.”
“Got the guns out,” Anson Carter added. “Oh my goodness gracious. Not sneaking those by TSA PreCheck with those bad boys.”
After asking several hockey-related questions, Bissonnette eventually broached the elephant in the room, or I guess, the TV set: the tattoos on Dubois’s lorge arms. The former enforcer pressed Dubois on whether he had one specific artist or a favorite tat.
“I’ve been to a few people. Most of them are (done) with one guy,” Dubois said. “And my most memorable one, I don’t think I could share on air. But it’s, yeah, I mean, you get one, and then you just keep going and keep going and keep going. I haven’t gotten one in a few years because you got to stay out of the sun, stay out of pool, stay out of sauna (after getting tattooed). So at the end of the season, it’s a little hard. But, yeah, it’s been a long journey with these.”
Among the tattoos visible in frame were a bucking horse, a flower, and a butterfly.
Bissonnette asked the evasive Dubois if he had a tramp stamp.
“No, no, no, no, no, no,” Dubois said, laughing.
“Is it just because this is the first interview? Is it like, if we get to know you better, are you going to tell us?” TNT host Liam McHugh asked.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Dubois responded, smiling wryly before cracking, “You got to bring me out for dinner before I tell you. We’ll see. Maybe one day.”
Joking aside, some of Dubois’ tattoos have deep family roots. In an interview several years ago, Dubois revealed that two of the pieces on his right arm honor his late maternal grandfather, Mike McClure, a Harley-Davidson enthusiast who raced, repaired, and rode motorcycles in Atlanta. As a child, Dubois spent summers visiting him and remembered being taken for rides on his Harleys.
“He was hilarious,” Dubois told the Empty Netters podcast in 2023. “He passed away when I was 12. He lived in Atlanta. My mom’s from Atlanta, all that whole side of the family, they’re still there. So every summer we’d go down there for four weeks, six weeks. And every time we’d go see him, he was retired, but he worked at the Harley-Davidson shop as kind of just like the old man that works there.
“We’d go see him there, and he’d be working on his Harleys back home,” Dubois continued. “He’d buy some, repair them, drive them for a bit, sell them. So that was kind of a cycle of it. So, he’d always bring us out, me and my sister, he’d bring me, then drive back and get my sister, drive back. He was like very calm. He wouldn’t talk much.
“So all my life, I want tattoos. My mom has said, ‘No chance you’re getting them until you’re 18. I’m not going to sign that paper. No chance.’ And I turned 18, and I got them. I always wanted a Harley. But I want to buy his, the one he was driving when he passed away. I kind of want to retrace it and buy it just to have it in my garage.”
He revealed the story behind more of his tattoos, and perhaps the forbidden one, while speaking with BarDown’s Jesse Pollock in 2021.
“So my left arm, all my left arm, that’s all my grandparents,” Dubois said. “My mom’s dad, he had, I think, 10-ish tattoos. He rode motorcycles. He worked at Harley-Davidson. He’s that typical, not rough guy, but he’d always be working on his motorcycles when you get to see him. He lived in Atlanta. I always looked up to him.
“A lot of these are based on my grandparents. These two here, for my grandfather, (he) had this one on his arm; I added his initials to it. My dad’s parents, the necklace that my grandfather had. I now have my grandmother’s name (Beccy McClure) – a bunch of things like that. I got one on my ribs for my gym back home; we said if one of us made the NHL, we’d get it tattooed. Then I got one on my leg. That’s a long story, but it was a fun night, and I have a lot of tattoos, so it gets mixed in well with the others.”
While speaking with TNT on Wednesday, Dubois was also asked who had the worst tattoo on the team.
“Worst tattoo?” Dubois said. “I don’t know. I mean, we got some good ink on the team. LT, Marty. Trying to think. Tuchy’s got some good ones, too. I don’t think there’s any bad ones, or not that I know of yet.”
