Jets forward looking to put season from hell behind him

COVID quarantine and feuding with Torts took huge physical, mental toll on Dubois

Pierre-luc Dubois said he doesn't want to make excuses for all that went wrong last year.

After all, he wasn't the only hockey player who had to quarantine because of COVID-19. Nor was he the first player who didn't see eye to eye with his coach, who then asked for a trade, got moved, got injured, and was then forced to play a position he didn't really want to play.

Those things happen, he said. It's a player's responsibility to battle through the adversity and make the best of a bad situation. And, Dubois said, he tried to do that. At the same time, if you want to know why the Winnipeg Jets forward had the worst season of his career, you probably don't have to look far.

“It was like, if I had a good year and I talked about (all that went wrong), you know people would keep saying, `Oh, it's fine. It was a tough year,'” Dubois said at this week's NHL player media tour in Toronto. “But I had a bad year and now it kind of sounds like an excuse.”

What it sounds like was a season from hell — for both Dubois and the Jets, who gave up Patrik Laine and Jack Roslovic in exchange for a player who fell well short of expectations.

“It just felt like I was always chasing the game physically,” said Dubois. “When that starts, it mentally starts kicking in, where your physical attributes aren't there as much. It was kind of a snowball effect.”

It started less than two months before the season began, when Dubois was forced into a mandatory three-week quarantine after several players with the Columbus Blue Jackets tested positive for COVID -19. During that time, team doctors were still unsure about how the virus affected individuals and warned Dubois not to do anything physically demanding. That meant Dubois, a six-foot-three and 219-pound power forward whose game is predicated on outmuscling his competition, was weak and slow when the training camp opened.

“From Game 1, I wasn't in the shape I want to be in,” he said. It got worse. Much worse. When the season began, news leaked that Dubois had asked for a trade out of Columbus. He still hasn't gone into detail why he wanted out, but it's not exactly a secret that he and then-coach John Tortorella didn't see eye to eye during their time together.

Tortorella, who called the third overall pick in the 2016 draft a “prima donna” for asking to be moved, benched Dubois twice in the first five games of the season. Mercifully, he was then moved in a trade that seemed to make sense for both teams. But it hasn't worked out that way.

While you would think that leaving a toxic environment would have made Dubois happy, the transition from playing for a drill sergeant to a player-friendly coach like Paul Maurice added another wrinkle to his season.

At least with Tortorella, Dubois knew his role and where he fit in. With Maurice, Dubois never seemed to find a home.

He played two games with the Jets before suffering a lower-body injury that knocked him out of the lineup for a couple of weeks. When he returned to the lineup, the 23-year-old was moved from centre to wing, put into a scoring role and then a checking role, and played with a variety of linemates.

By the end of the year, a player who had scored 27 goals and 61 points in 2018-19 had just eight goals and 20 points in 41 games with the Jets. If there was any consolation, Laine also had a miserable year, finishing with 10 goals and 21 points in 45 games with Columbus.

“I'd be lying if I didn't say a weight was lifted off my chest,” Dubois said of ending the year. “Now I can get into shape. Now I can get back to the gym and make a plan.”