Dumoulin sparkles in postseason
guessing there’s a photo somewhere of Dumoulin and a bunch of shrimps on ice crowding around a giant trophy).
This is remarkable stuff. Remarkable enough to send me on a journey searching for an answer to the following question: What makes Brian Dumoulin a winner?
• “I think he was born with the ability to win,” Dumoulin’s childhood friend, Matt Ladderbush, told the Portland Press Herald, and that might well be true. But I’m going to fast-forward 20 years, to June 22, 2012, the day Dumoulin became a Penguins player.
Turns out then-Penguins general manager Ray Shero insisted Dumoulin, rather than a second-round pick, be the final piece of a draft-day deal that sent Jordan Staal south.
Dumoulin was an interesting prospect, but Derrick Pouliot, drafted eighth, was supposed to be the top-pair defenseman in the deal. Then-Carolina GM Jim Rutherford (you know him) agreed to Shero’s request, Rutherford confirmed Saturday, because the New York Rangers were sniffing around and Rutherford badly wanted Staal.
As for Dumoulin, Shero recalled Rutherford telling him, “Ronnie Francis loves this kid.”
Seems appropriate. Francis was an understatedly great all-around center — and sometimes only players can spot the subtleties that make other players stand out.
Such was the case with Dumoulin. Paul Steigerwald recalls ex-NHLers immediately taking note of this 6foot-4 string bean at prospect camp in 2009.
“They’d be doing all these annoying skating drills,” Steigerwald recalled. “And Dumoulin would be leading every one of them.” What makes Brian Dumoulin a winner?
“No. 1, he’s a great teammate,” said New Jersey Devils coach John Hynes, who coached Dumoulin with the Penguins minor league team in WilkesBarre. “He understands what it is to be on a team, and he totally commits.”
Sean Tremblay, Dumoulin’s junior coach, expounded.
“He was playing so well in the playoffs last year, I called him and joked, ‘How do you feel about never being on the power play?’” Tremblay says. “He said, ‘We have other guys who do that. I’m here to defend and move pucks. It’s like you used to tell me — defend and distribute, and you’ll be worth your weight in gold.’
“He just a guy who knows who he is.”
Tremblay laughed and mentioned a lunch back home with Dumoulin last summer, after the latter signed his name to a six-year contract.
“I told him, ‘I guess your weight in gold is $24 million.’ Might even be better than gold.”
So yes, part of the answer
here is Dumoulin being a quiet leader and putting others before himself. Part of it is playing on talented teams.
“Each level I got to, we had a good enough team to win,” Dumoulin said. “It gets ingrained in you to play at your highest level when the stakes are highest.”
Plus, he always had a natural attraction to winning. He’ll never forget his recruiting visit to Boston College nine years ago, which happened to coincide with thenPenguins defenseman Brooks Orpik (now the enemy) visiting campus with the Stanley Cup.
“That was cool,” Dumoulin said. “It was part of the reason I wanted to go to BC.”
He’s also a winner because of his work ethic, his level-headedness — “Still that humble guy from Biddeford,” Tremblay said — and a relentless positivity his legendary college coach, Jerry York, often referred to. All of that. But you had better be able to play.
• Something happened behind the Penguins net in a frenetic third period Thursday in Game 1, something that tells you a lot about Dumoulin the player.
When he gained possession, Dumoulin saw Alex Ovechkin coming for him. Rather than make a panic play, he turned slightly toward the boards, cradled the puck, and let Ovechkin charge past him like a raging bull.
Dumoulin held the puck for a second longer, surveyed the scene and calmly bounced a backhanded pass off the boards to spark a clean breakout.
“He just has a mind for hockey,” says long-time defense partner Kris Letang.
Letang added that Dumoulin has good size, a long reach and more giddyup than people realize. He gets to pucks and gets them out. But he’s also willing to take big hits to make a play.
Dumoulin performs with metronomic consistency — and there’s a lot going on in his game most observers probably miss. That’s what Gonchar was talking about, and it’s what Hynes eventually realized in WilkesBarre.
“He understands angles, time and space, how to use his stick and body,” Hynes said. “We asked him at first to be more physical. But that’s not his game. He evolved into his own player.”
Dumoulin’s take: “[Hynes] really worked with me on my angling, to angle guys off, and use my stick position as my physicality, so to say. I’m not knockin ‘em over, but I’m still keeping body position. If you commit and get beat, you leave your teammates vulnerable.”
NHL teams scouting Dumoulin were obsessed with his toughness — or perceived lack of it — leading into the 2009 draft (Carolina would take him 51st overall).
“I remember everybody asking, ‘Is he tough enough? Will he engage?’” Tremblay recalled. “It was ridiculous.” Finally, Tremblay had enough. To hear him tell it, the day before a Junior A game against the Junior Bruins at Phillips Exeter Academy, he called the opposing coach, Peter Masters, with a request: Could Dumoulin fight your tough guy late in the game?
Masters agreed. Both coaches routinely sent players into the draft, so apparently they did these kinds of things for each other (which is so very hockey and so very wonderful).
“I’ll never forget it,” Tremblay said. “The place was packed. There must have been 29 [NHL] teams watching. Brian handled himself well, and the whole will-he-engage thing was over with real fast.”
Dumoulin laughed when I asked if that was, in fact, how it all went down.
“I mean, kind of,” he said. “There’s a little more to it. [The other player] took a cheap shot at me the game before. Obviously pretty upset. He was older. I wasn’t going into the game looking to fight anyone or anything. It just kind of evolved that way.”
Dumoulin, 26, continues to evolve as a player. He seems to still be growing into his frame. He’s adding more offense. He has six points in seven playoff games this season, matching his total from 25 games a year ago.
Not surprisingly, he tends to appear on the scoresheet at crucial moments. Two years ago, he scored in the Cup-clinching win at San Jose. Last year, he scored a game-winner in the Ottawa series and assisted on Carl Hagelin’s empty-netter in the Cup clincher at Nashville.
“The thing that jumps out to me the most with Brian is his compete level,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said. “He’s a guy who plays really well when the stakes are high. His best hockey in my tenure here has been in the playoff runs.”
• One last thing — the name.
The Dumoulins have French-Canadian roots. One of Brian’s grandfathers migrated from Victoriaville, Quebec, to work in the Maine paper mills, and I noticed Tremblay pronounced the name “DaMOO-lee-in.” Is that the way they say it back home? Do we have another Conor SHARE-ee situation on our hands?
“No, it’s DUMO-lin,” Dumoulin said.
Fair enough, although I’d argue the spelling matters more. And near as I can tell, “Dumoulin” is spelled correctly on the Stanley Cup.
Twice and counting.
“I think [Brian Dumoulin] was born with the ability to win.” Matt Ladderbush, childhood friend