The Capitals acquired and believed in Pierre-Luc Dubois. He has rewarded them for that trust

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — When the Washington Capitals acquired Pierre-Luc Dubois less than two weeks before his full no-trade clause kicked in last summer, they believed they could get the most out of a player coming off a down season joining his fourth NHL organization at the age of 26.

Things just weren't working out for Dubois with the Los Angeles Kings, who got him in a trade from Winnipeg in June 2023 and signed him to an eight-year, $68 million contract. They wanted a goalie, then-Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan saw an opportunity to get a talented center in exchange for Darcy Kuemper and coach Spencer Carbery gave Dubois an important role from the start of training camp.

All Dubois has done since is reward that trust. His 43 assists are three more than his point total from his only season with the Kings, and he's on pace for his most productive one since entering the league in 2017.

“The credit goes to the coaching staff and to the players here — the whole organization, really,” Dubois told The Associated Press on Monday. “Since my first phone call after I got traded, I felt the confidence that they had in me. I felt how much they appreciated my game and who I am as a person, and the players, since training camp, the same thing. You put all those things together and it just makes my life easier just to be myself and play hockey and not do anything different, not be anybody different: just show up every day and just be Pierre-Luc Dubois.”

With 61 points through 70 games, he returns to Winnipeg on Tuesday night only three points away from a career high and is one of the reasons the Capitals are atop the NHL and were the first team this season to clinch a playoff spot. Leading scorer Dylan Strome said Dubois, along with 29-goal scorer Aliaksei Protas, has arguably been one of their best players.

“Even when he wasn’t scoring a ton of goals at the beginning of the season, I feel like he still was playing really well,” Strome said. “He was kind of the piece we were missing to be a really successful team. I think we had some good stretches last year of great defense, and we were kind of missing another line of good offense and he’s brought that completely.”

Dubois is tied with MVP front-runner Leon Draisaitl for seventh in the league with 35 even-strength assists and has also embraced the lockdown role of defending against opponents' top players. That was not something that would have been expected when Washington got him from the Kings.

Defenseman Matt Roy, who played with him in LA and signed with the Capitals as a free agent on July 1, is thrilled to see this turnaround but pointed out that Dubois, to his credit, never sulked or dragged his feet last season when the points weren't coming.

“Off the ice, to be honest, not much has changed,” Roy said. “He’s always been a great teammate. But on the ice, you can just see the confidence in him and the confidence of the team and the coaches that they have in him. I think it’s coming full circle, and it’s nice to see him having such a good year.”

Carbery is the favorite to be coach of the year thanks in no small part to how he has helped Dubois — the third pick in the 2016 draft by the Columbus Blue Jackets — rediscover his confidence and live up to his potential and the contract.

“Knowing the type of player that he was and is and what I had seen on film and having coached against him, I knew there was a ton of positives inside of his game: his skillset, his intelligence, his size — all of those things,” Carbery said. “Who he is as a player, it’s important that he and all of our players have the confidence in (the fact that) they have a certain skillset and I need to, as a head coach, appreciate that and let them thrive in the environment.”

Dubois figures anyone from a teacher to a hotel or restaurant manager can relate to feeling better about their job when you feel comfortable and valued in the workplace like he is with the Capitals, which has allowed him to be on top of his game.

“I want to be coached as a player, I want to be pushed in the gym, I want to be challenged on the ice in games and everything,” Dubois said. “When you have a coaching staff that does that and communicates it’s black or it’s white, no gray area, and when they’re happy, they’re happy and when they’re not happy, you hear about it — you put all that together and it’s just an easy environment to do your job and you want to do your job for the guy to your left and the guy to the right. I think that helps a lot.”

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

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