Less than six months later, Dubois played one of the most
disinterested-looking shifts in recent memory, getting himself benched against the Lightning. Tortorella blew up at Dubois for his lack of effort, leading to Dubois’ eventual trade to Winnipeg.
But the seeds for Dubois’ exit were planted over a year before that shift. When he was 20, Dubois was part of a team meeting that made a massive impression on how he viewed his career.
It was September 2018. The Blue Jackets’ two biggest stars,
Artemi Panarin and
Sergei Bobrovsky, had just informed the team that they would both pursue free agency when that season was over. Columbus’ first meeting of the year was a team-wide heart-to-heart about Panarin’s and Bobrovsky’s futures.
“It was eye-opening,” Dubois says. “There was so much honesty. A lot of courage. Everybody was saying what was on their mind. Then, at the end of the meeting, it’s, ‘All right, we have one goal and it’s to win. Everybody’s on board? Yeah! Now we go to work.’”
Even as the Blue Jackets held on to them past the trade deadline during a playoff push, Panarin and Bobrovsky were true to their word. In July 2019, Panarin left Columbus for the
New York Rangers; Bobrovsky signed in Florida.
But not before the Blue Jackets swept the 128-point, Presidents’ Trophy-winning Tampa Bay Lightning. Panarin and Bobrovsky declared their intentions and Dubois watched as his team came together despite the outside noise. That left a mark.
Even though a part of him hoped to sign a long-term extension the summer Panarin and Bobrovsky left Columbus, Dubois admits it never seemed realistic. Contract negotiations didn’t begin in earnest until 2020, before the postseason bubble. Then came Dubois’ monstrous performance against Toronto, his encore against Tampa Bay and the realistic expectation that his contract price had gone up.
There was also the matter of Columbus’ rebuild.
“I was looking at where I was in my career and where the team was going,” Dubois says. “I thought the most probable outcome would have been a three-year deal. That’s where it was going. Then I thought, after Year 3, what happens? Because then you’re one year away from free agency. I thought, ‘I’ve never really been able to decide where I want to play.’ I was still young so it was fine but I also knew that we were going to be in a rebuild for those three years.”
He says he saw the writing on the wall. The team was heading for a rebuild with or without him.
“That’s where the team was going and where they eventually went,” Dubois says. It was an idea he couldn’t get behind, so he signed a two-year contract in December 2020, getting himself to within two years of UFA status.
“To me, it was, ‘You only have one career. You only live once,’” he says. “If we’re rebuilding and not making the playoffs for the three years that I’m here, it’s going to be tough and frustrating.”
What about Tortorella?
“Torts and I had an intense relationship. At times, he went home and hated me. At times, I went home and hated him. But we were two competitors that both wanted to win and he knew that and I knew that. And I was lucky enough to grow up with a father that was a hockey coach and he told me that you can’t take anything personally because if a coach is pushing you, it’s because he wants you to become the best player that you can be.”
And the public dressing-down Tortorella gave him after that fateful final shift?
“If you didn’t play a sport or didn’t have a teacher or maybe even a parent that was really hard on you, you wouldn’t understand how it makes sense to yell at somebody and then, 20 minutes later, shake their hand and say ‘good game.’ But that was the relationship that Torts and I had. I think some people just saw what happened in Toronto, us yelling at each other, and thought we hated each other. Our relationship was complicated but there was always respect there and I think that’s the only thing that really matters.”
So Dubois got his wish. In January 2021, Columbus traded him to Winnipeg, where his dad was an assistant coach with the Manitoba Moose. The Jets gambled that Dubois’ parents’ home cooking would keep him happy. They were right about that.
They were wrong that it would keep him in Winnipeg. Dubois had seen Panarin and Bobrovsky dictate their futures on a team that won anyway. He went from a team on its way to missing the playoffs for three straight years to one that got there twice.
But the idea that he could control his future was firmly implanted.
