Potential Offseason Trade Landing Spots for Jets' Pierre-Luc Dubois
After another mediocre season, the Winnipeg Jets find themselves in a position where major changes could be coming to their roster.
It's clear that something needs to change for a franchise that seems to be slipping further and further away from being a championship contender.
Franchise goalie Connor Hellebuyck has already made it known he does not want to be part of a rebuild.
Mark Scheifele could find himself on the trade block.
And center Pierre-Luc Dubois is headed to restricted free agency and seems to have no interest in signing a long-term deal with the Jets.
While Hellebuyck and Scheifele deals are far from a given, a Dubois trade only seems to be a matter of when and where as opposed to if. So let's take a look at five teams that could (or should) be potential landing spots for him and what it make take to get him.
Dubois is not a superstar by any means, but he is a legitimate No. 1 center that can give a team 25 goals and 60 points. He can also drive possession and play a big two-way game. He is also right in the prime years of his career, just now preparing to enter his age-25 season which tends to be when players hit their top offensive production. He would make any team better.
Montréal Canadiens
1 of 5
Montréal has been speculated as the most logical and likely landing spot for Dubois more than a year now.
It seems to be his preferred destination, and the Canadiens have a need for a player like him.
Adding Dubois to a roster that already has Nick Suzuki at center could give Montréal a very strong 1-2 punch to work with down the middle, with both of them entering their prime years. Neither one of them is going to put up elite numbers or challenge for a scoring title, but if you have two players down the middle that can consistently give you 25 goals, 60 points, and positively drive play forward, you can absolutely win with that.
Montréal also has some promising young talent starting to come up through the ranks.
Suzuki and Cole Caufield are both signed long-term, while recent first-round picks Juraj Slafkovský (the 2022 No. 1 overall pick) and Filip Mesar are on the way. Montreal also owns the No. 5 overall pick in a very top-heavy 2023 class as well as the No. 31 overall pick (via the Florida Panthers).
So what would a potential deal look like here?
There was a report that Winnipeg had asked for Suzuki in trade talks earlier this year, an offer that Montreal naturally laughed off. But Kirby Dach could be a good middle ground as a starting point.
The Canadiens sending Dach and the No. 31 overall pick to Winnipeg for Dubois seems like something that could work.
Winnipeg gets a young player that still has some upside and another first-round pick to work with.
The Canadiens get another top-line center to hopefully build around. The only issue Montréal will have here is finding the salary-cap space to pay Dubois what he wants. Montréal, despite its poor record and lackluster roster, is already pushed to the upper limits of the cap and would need to shed salary to add Dubois. But that can be done in a lot of ways.
Colorado Avalanche
2 of 5
While Montréal seems like the most likely destination, Colorado would be the most logical. And perhaps the best fit.
The Avalanche never adequately replaced Nazem Kadri when he left in free agency and did not have a solid answer as a second-line center behind Nathan MacKinnon. Add in the departure of Andre Burakovsky and the season-ending injury to Gabriel Landeskog and the powerful Avalanche lineup lost a lot of depth scoring.
Well, Kadri and Burakovsky aren't walking back through that door this offseason, and unfortunately neither is Landeskog as he has already been ruled out for the 2023-24 season.
That need for additional scoring depth still remains.
Dubois would be a natural fit to slide into that second-line role and significantly boost the Avalanche's depth.
The injury to Landeskog should also help the Avalanche clear enough salary-cap space to help pay Dubois' next contract.
The big hurdles here are going to be Winnipeg's willingness to trade within the division, as well as Colorado's lack of trade assets. The Avalanche farm system is not particularly strong, and while they do have each of their next three first-round picks, their draft pick cupboard is very depleted beyond that. Colorado has no second, third or fourth round pick this season and no second or third round pick in 2024.
A potential outside of the box proposal here might be something centered around defenseman Sam Girard. The Avalanche have a logjam on defense with Cale Makar, Girard, Devon Toews, Josh Manson and Erik Johnson in place as regulars, with Bowen Byram on the rise as another potential star. Moving Girard could also clear enough salary-cap space to keep Toews beyond this season if they so choose.
Boston Bruins
3 of 5
This could be a real wild-card possibility depending on a few variables.
If Patrice Bergeron and David Krejčí do not return for another season the Bruins -- who will still have eyes on Stanley Cup contention -- are going to have a major issue at center.
Charlie Coyle and Pavel Zacha are fine players for depth roles, but nobody there is going to be a top-line player on a contender. They would desperately need to find somebody else that could help fill that role and it is not going to happen on the unrestricted free agent market and certainly not from a thin farm system.
A trade would need to be the path forward.
That is where Dubois could potentially slide in.
It would also be preferable for Winnipeg to move him to the Eastern Conference (though, that should be far down the priority list).
Like Colorado, Boston does not have a lot to deal from, and unlike Colorado, its salary-cap situation is not the best. Bergeron and Krejčí were playing this past season on bargain basement contracts and David Pastrňák's new deal will be kicking in this season. Flexibility is slim here.
How is this for a scenario: Winnipeg trades Hellebuyck, and then asks for Jeremy Swayman -- also a restricted free agent -- as a centerpiece for a Dubois deal?
The Bruins would probably prefer to keep its goaltending duo of Swayman and Linus Ullmark, but the salary cap might not allow for that.
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Chicago Blackhawks
4 of 5
The Chicago Blackhawks spent the past year completely gutting its roster in an effort to make it bad enough to position itself for the best odds at Connor Bedard in the 2023 NHL Draft.
They may not have finished with the league's worst record and secured the best odds, but the lottery balls still ended up going their way land the No. 1 overall pick and Bedard.
With that out of the way, it is time for the Blackhawks to start assembling talent and bringing in NHL-caliber players to try and win.
Chicago has almost no long-term contracts on its books, it has a truckload of salary-cap space to play with at its disposal, and it has multiple first-round picks in each of the next three drafts, and eight picks within the first three rounds of the 2023 class (including six in the first two rounds).
They need to utilize that cap space and draft pick capital and land some significant pieces.
Dubois is still at an age where he could theoretically be a part of the next good Blackhawks team, and they have the finances and draft capital to land him.
Chicago should put together a package similar to the one that they received for Alex DeBrincat a year ago (a first, second, and third-round pick) as the starting point of an offer for Dubois.
Detroit Red Wings
5 of 5
For Steve Yzerman and the Detroit Red Wings, the time has come for a meaningful jump forward.
The rebuild has gone on long enough that the playoffs should be within reach, even in a tough Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference.
The Red Wings dumped significant free-agent resources into the team a year ago, adding Andrew Copp, Dominik Kubalik, David Perron, Ville Husso and Olli Maatta to a roster that already had Dylan Larkin, Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider as its core.
It is a good starting point, but it needs more help.
Like Chicago, Detroit is a team that is loaded with salary-cap space and draft capital.
Even with Larkin's new contract kicking in this season, the Red Wings are still entering the summer with more than $30 million in salary-cap space to spend along with multiple first-round draft picks in each of the next two years.
Adding Dubois could potentially give the Red Wings a combination of Larkin, Dubois and Copp down the middle. That would be an outstanding trio and have everybody slotted into their best possible roles.
Package together two of those four first-round picks over the next two years and see if Winnipeg is willing to deal from that.
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