Dubois is reportedly seeking $9M per year on a new contract – but is he worth it?

• Player Overview
• What We Know
• Comparables
• Projection

Player Overview

Despite being about a week away from turning just 25 years old, Pierre-Luc Dubois’ relatively short NHL career to this point has already generated quite a bit of attention, arguably for the wrong reasons.

After being taken third overall by the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2016 ahead of Jesse Puljujarvi (in somewhat of a surprising move), Pierre-Luc Dubois emerged as a top-six center for the Blue Jackets pretty quickly. After a year back in junior hockey after the draft, Dubois made the jump to the NHL in the 2017-18 season, and by his sophomore year the following season, Dubois had already eclipsed 60 points.

However, by the 2020-21 season, it became common knowledge that Dubois already wanted out of Columbus and had requested a trade. As a result, Dubois was dealt to the Winnipeg Jets, with Patrik Laine and Jack Roslovic heading the other way.

Dubois did struggle a bit in his first year with the Jets after the trade, posting only eight goals and 20 points in his first 41 games with the team. However, he rebounded in the 2021-22 season for 28 goals and 60 points, before posting the best numbers of his career this season, with 27 goals and 63 points in 73 games.

However, it’s been reported that Dubois isn’t interested in signing another deal with the Jets: not even a one-year contract to get to unrestricted free agency in 2024. As a result, it seems as though Dubois is close to forcing his way out of his second team in just his six years in the league.

What We Know

• Dubois is reportedly seeking $9M per year on an eight-year contract.
• Dubois has been heavily linked to the Montreal Canadiens ever since his agent Pat Brisson stated last summer that Dubois had interest in playing with the Canadiens.
• It’s been reported that the Canadiens are also interested in Dubois. As a result, the Canadiens remain the clear frontrunner to land the center.
• A sign-and-trade is reportedly a possibility, in order to allow Dubois to add an eighth year to his deal.

Comparables

Below, we take a look at a possible contract for Dubois. For more information on the stats/tables used below, including how the payment rate in projections is determined, visit the About the Site page.

For the comparables, we’ll try to stick to centers around Dubois’ age who had similar production at the time of signing their contract.

8 YEARS

Of the 14 comparables listed for an eight-year deal, 11 of them would project Dubois to hit at least $7.95M. At the same time though, 11 of the 14 projections would also put Dubois at $8.95M or below. So while Dubois may want a $9M cap hit, the reality is he’s very likely to fall somewhere between $8M and $9M per year.

Looking at the lower end of the projections though, Josh Norris had very similar stats before signing his deal, which would project Dubois’ contract at $8.05M. However, Norris also had significantly less NHL experience than Dubois at the time of signing, meaning there was arguably more risk in the deal, given the minimal sample size of high-end production. As a result, we can assume Dubois should be above Norris’ $8.05M projection and at least closer to the Giroux and Stamkos projections around $8.3M.

Perhaps two of the better comparables would be Brayden Point and Mathew Barzal, who both singed their extensions recently and had relatively similar experience up the point of signing. The comparables would project Dubois at $8.67M and $8.61M respectively.

However, something else visible in the table is that the players with the biggest gap between their 82-game points pace during their signing year versus over their career generally have the lowest payment rates of the group. From Scheifele at the bottom, all the way up to Giroux, the bottom seven players listed all had at least a 9-point gap between signing year points per 82 and career points per 82. Then look to the top seven players listed, from Toews down to Barzal, and not a single one of them has a gap as large as 9 points between their signing year and career production.

So we can take from this that a larger sample size of sustained production is going to equal a higher payment rate. However, Dubois is coming off somewhat of an outlier season, where he had an 82-game points pace of 71 in his signing year and 57 points per 82 over his career – a 14-point gap.

So we can bet that Dubois should probably be on the lower end of the range of projections. While anywhere between $8M and $9M is realistic, there’s a good shot Dubois’ range should somewhere between $8.25M and $8.50M, if he takes an eight-year deal.

5-7 YEARS

Chances are, Dubois’ long-term deal would be for eight years with a sign-and-trade, rather than anywhere from five to seven years. That said, there are a few comparables for a possible deal.

Again, it’s unlikely Dubois would end up taking a shorter deal instead of eight years. But the projections do create a clear range for what a deal could look like at five years, six years or seven years, with a slightly lower cap hit.

1/2 YEARS

While there aren’t a ton of examples for a three or four-year deal for a player of Dubois’ age and production, another scenario could be Dubois taking a short-term deal. There are a couple examples of possible two year comparables.

Given Dubois is coming off a one-year deal at $6M and just had his best offensive season yet, we know any two-year deal should be at least up around the projection the Domi contract at more than $6.5M, rather than the number Strome’s deal would project.

More likely though, if Dubois wasn’t dealt to a team he was willing to sign with long-term, we could see a one-year deal that would walk the forward to free agency. It was reported last year that Dubois was intending to test free agency in 2024 as a UFA, and this would allow him to do so.

He’d have a qualifying offer of $6M to meet, but there’s a good chance the number on a one-year deal would come in even higher, with arbitration being another factor as well.

The comparables don’t give the best range, with the projection from Hayes’ deal coming in too high, and the Karlsson and Copp projections coming in too low.

That said, perhaps the best predictor of future payment rate is past payment rate. So looking at what Dubois’ got on his last deal, it’s possible he could end up in the range of $6.8M on a one-year deal given his increased production this year, like the projection from his last contract would suggest. While it seems a little high, we know it should be well over the $6M mark, and somewhere around $6.5M could be pretty realistic.

Projection

If Dubois is dealt to a location he’s willing to sign long-term, and eight-year deal is by far the most likely term. If no sign-and-trade is arranged, a seven-year deal is also possible.

While other lengths for a deal are unlikely, if he ends up with a team where he’ll only take a one-year deal before heading to free agency in 2024, we can expect it to be somewhere in the $6M to $7M range, likely a moderate raise to come in right around $6.5M.