Post-Game Talk: ITS OVER- Did we make a huge mistake on Pierre-Luc Dubois Thread?

[Rapala]

Sorry but the topic here is about Dubois. I don't think it's usefull to repeat here, what you have said many, many times . It's redundant after 2-3 years , we all know your position on Bergevin.

Awesome as if I was the one who started that conversation. Use Ignore you clearly need it in my case.

 

[ZUKI]

I am not sure Dubois is better than Suzuki right now, both are producing around 60 points, Dubois is 1 year older, has been playing with better players. Suzuki has the better shot, defensively I d say they are similar…

Dubois was injured, he missed around 10 games and since his return, his production felt apart. He still got 26 goals, and has the same production than Suzuki. I really like both players, and also think that Dach could turns into a very good player, but he isn't there yet.

Anotherr think that makes Dubois a good fit, is that he's more physical, and plays in front of the goalies, something we miss here

 

[ZUKI]

Awesome as if I was the one who started that conversation. Use Ignore you clearly need it in my case.

Yes, it's true. But it was as you said, a conversation. We were talking about Dubois and his fit vs the team's readiness to compete. It was about the extra draft selections he got in his last 2 seasons that are going to accelerate the rebuild of Hugues. It wasn't about glorifying or shitting on Bergevin.

 

[Gaylord Q Tinkledink]

For centres, Suzuki is tied for 36th with Joel Eriksson-Ek and Vincent Trochek.

PLD is listed as a left winger for some f***ing reason, but he's taken all.ost 1,000 faceoffs.

At 60 points, 1 behind Suzuki in 8 less games, PLD is tied with Zegras and Hertl, who've play 4 (Hertl) and 7( Zegras) more games than him.

Top be in the top 32, you been 63 points.

Full season of Suzuki and with PLD, or Dach potentially taking some of the better players away, or creating a better powerplay, especially with either a youngsters stepping up, trade, or signing of an actually good offensive dman, both can be top 32 in points in my opinion. (For centres)

The question becomes, when will they get better at faceoffs.

 

[BaseballCoach]

Both where Rebuilds

(18-22): Rebuild with flaws but still signing guys and shooting for playoffs
vs
(22+): Rebuild with proper long term vision and selling where you can

Fact: All of these pieces come from the Rebuild flaws from 18-22 years. Suzuki, Caufield, Guhle, Xhekaj, Harris, Roy, Farrell, Mailloux, Dobes.

Other than the Pacioretty trade, none of the other moves were rebuilding moves. We made our draft picks, so what?

We made no attempt to sell older players to get more picks. Drafting like always and signing one guy from a tryout camp is nothing special. Do you think signing RHP in the 7th round is a product of a rebuild?

 

[BLONG7]

For centres, Suzuki is tied for 36th with Joel Eriksson-Ek and Vincent Trochek.

PLD is listed as a left winger for some f***ing reason, but he's taken all.ost 1,000 faceoffs.

At 60 points, 1 behind Suzuki in 8 less games, PLD is tied with Zegras and Hertl, who've play 4 (Hertl) and 7( Zegras) more games than him.

Top be in the top 32, you been 63 points.

Full season of Suzuki and with PLD, or Dach potentially taking some of the better players away, or creating a better powerplay, especially with either a youngsters stepping up, trade, or signing of an actually good offensive dman, both can be top 32 in points in my opinion. (For centres)

The question becomes, when will they get better at faceoffs.

Caufiled stays healthy, Suzuki gets 75-80 pts no question.....
Faceoffs are a huge problem for Suzuki and the Habs, in general.

 

[BLONG7]

Why didn't Bergevin trade several picks from 18-22 years to make the team better?

Stupidity.................he never did, what he said he would do, build through the draft....never.
Unfortunately.
He was always happy with Price, dragging us to the bubble.....pure idiocy.

 

[Scriptor]

He’s 69th in scoring and could be looking to be paid like he’s a top 30 player in the league. That’s the issue a lot of fans are having right now.

Your NHL scouting team needs to tell you if Dubois is trending toward 70 points (that makes him 26th for Centers, if you include the wingers that are still classified as Centers, so closer to 22nd). If he exceeds that in his prime years, he will become a top-15 C. IMO, that can be expected of Suzuki as he keeps progressing, also, within his prime years.

If itMs Montreal's scouting staffs professional opinion that both can become between 15th and 20th best Centers in the league, you trade for Dubois and have an awesome One-Two punch. A lot of it is about development and having both will help both players' development curve, IMO.

Where he stands, today, as a point producer has no absolute bearing on whether you want to give him more money than that os worth on a long term contract. There needs to be some projection with the 24-yr-old and those freezing everything in time to justify that Dubois has no value at a higher cap hit are not necessarily approaching this the right way?

 

[Habs Halifax]

Other than the Pacioretty trade, none of the other moves were rebuilding moves. We made our draft picks, so what?

We made no attempt to sell older players to get more picks. Drafting like always and signing one guy from a tryout camp is nothing special. Do you think signing RHP in the 7th round is a product of a rebuild?

You guys are nit picking because you dislike Bergevin/Timmins. It's very clear. The main point is our rebuild started earlier than when Gorton/Hughes were hired. There are several key young pieces they already have in place and their rebuild version has better long term vision.

Bergevin inherited Price, Subban, Patch, Gallagher, 3rd OA pick. He could have sold guys like Markov and Pleky but he didn't.

Gorton/Hughes inherited Suzuki, Caufield, Guhle, Romanov, Xhekaj, Roy, Farrell, Harris, etc. He sold Toffoli, Chiarot, Lehkonen and might sell some more.

You guys are talking about the better rebuild strategy but you're being stubborn that Gorton/Hughes already had several rebuilding pieces in place.

 

[Scriptor]

I think he’s a snowflake. And I don’t think he’s worth the price of admission at 8+ million. I also think there’s a large part of our fanbase that are overrating the ever living crap out of him and will be disappointed when they see what he really is. I keep hearing how we’ve been offensively starved like we haven’t had 60 point players in the last 20-30 years. Then I get tossed over to he’s a “big power forward” which seems to be the same trap the same fans fall into over and over and over again. And I don’t get why you’re bringing up the star players within the division. They’re a clear step up on this guy. Dubois isn’t going to be the difference in making us competitive against teams that have players like that.

Clearly, then, we can place you in the Dubois sucks too much for me camp and we, at least, aren't playing a fantasy that, if he were free as an UFA, you'd be interested in him.

I can appreciate that because it is honest, even if I don't agree on the worth of the player in the first place.

Dubois currently has reached the 60-point plateau for the third time in already six years in the NHL at 24.

Currently, that places him at 80th in point production, one away from Suzuki and only 7 points off from 57th in the league.

The 57th position, in terms of Cap hit, for the league, is 8M per season.

The 72nd highest paid player in the league earns 7.5M and the 72nd point producer in the league has 62 points, instead of 60, currently, for Dubois.

I think that the salary range for what Dubois currently deserves, based on current point production, is pretty much easily set, but a slight rise in production can also be expected and factored in for the 24-yr-old's likely progression into his prime years (which he is now entering).

Suzuki money, at 7,875M, all things considered, is fair value, if not, even, 8M.

Suggesting that Dubois isn't worth a bigger cap hit in the Suzuki range is plainly wrong, nor is suggesting that a still progressing Suzuki doesn't deserve the long term Cap hit which he got.

EVERY LONG TERM CONTRACT FOR A YOUNG PLAYER STILL IN HIS RFA YEARS has a built in projection of production into the future.

At a 70-point ceiling, a reasonable future progression projection for Dubois, IMO, he would be 47th in point production this year, with not many games left to play, so he would finish somewhere around 50th.

With the 57th highest paid player earning 8M per season, that's not a huge gamble for fair market value over a long term deal.

That's the way the NHL market shapes up and the real world works, as opposed to vague qualifiers on a player's value based on God knows what.

 

[Scriptor]

PLD has 60pts in 69gp, that's 0.87ppg or a 71 pt pace.

Can you name five players who hit 70pts with the Habs in the last twenty years? Nope - because there's only been Kovalev (once), Koivu (twice), Max Domi (once), and Plekanec (twice).

How many players hit 0.87ppg(min GP 10) in the last twenty years? Only six in twenty years. Some teams have three PPG players in a season and we have only six in twenty years. The six are: Kovalev (twice), Koivu (twice), Pacioretty (once), Tatar (once), Subban (once), and Domi (once). The most recent was Tatar in 2019-2020.

Gimme a break with this. We're an offensively starved franchise and have maybe one player who could regularly hit 70 pts, his name is Cole Caufield and I think he's electric but he's so much of a shrimp teams passed on him in the draft despite his abundant talent and record-setting career.

Since all these other teams have better players, it goes to show how necessary it is to add good players to the Habs to even try to keep up. Unless you're one of those who think erratic results and not being competitive is an acceptable and permanent state for a team.

It's meaningless to say that one player won't close the gap so we shouldn't improve the roster. Never heard of depth?

I think there's a large chunk of this fanbase who think huddling around the thought of magic beans is more fun than watching good hockey players compete to win meaningful games.

71 points is 41st in the league, so far, this year.

41st highest paid in the league earns 8.5M.

Even if 71 points ended up 50th at the end of the year because of the few remaining games, 5oth highest paid in the league still earns 8M per season.

Dubois is not hot garbage as some are suggesting, with a smoke and mirrors value established for the player.

IMO, both Dubois and Suzuki have PPG upside (more so for Suzuki, IMO) and PPG players fall within the top-30 NHLers.

The top 30th paid player in the NHL is backstroke and he earns 9.2M!

Signing PPG upside players early as close to 8M dollars stands a chance to be a huge deal, even more so as the Cap ceiling goes up and upward pressure is applied to salaries in the near future (some upward pressure is already surely being applied in anticipation of the rising Cap ceiling).

If players paid 8M or less today don't quite reach the PPG status, they will just be playing on fair value contracts.

It's a win-win, provided there is at least a small progression. Otherwise, with no progression, it is not as big an overpayment at all as some make it out to be.

 

[BLONG7]

I disagree. Bergevin always straddled the fence, running his arse hole right along the spikes, hoping not to fall too heavily at any given time.

The tran sucked badly and we still got decent picks away from the late 20s, except when we got the unlikely run to the SCFs, but that's also when Bergevin went against common sense and chose the much maligned Mailloux who was projected much higher than he was chosen in the draft.

along the way, Bergevin also refused to sell off futures to raise the odds of competing, using, rather, the UFA market, for the most part to add bodies on the way to the SCFs and beyond, into the next season.

The rebuild was on at the same time as he chased a Stanley Cup dream and that was precisely his downfall, the inability to commit, one way or the other.

Moving the goalposts, and lowering expectations, were his mantra.
Never once, building a team with picking a direction on which way to go..........never all in or never a rebuild.

 

[Scriptor]

Moving the goalposts, and lowering expectations, were his mantra.
Never once, building a team with picking a direction on which way to go..........never all in or never a rebuild.

That's what really bothered me about Bergevin, but I'm glad he didn't commit All-In the wrong way before getting ousted.

HuGo is lucky that Timmins/Bergevin were able to strike gold with Caufield at 15th because of the size fear factor that let him slip down that low because that makes a top-5 pick despite being middle of the 1st round.

HuGo, in terms of hockey talent, is also lucky that Timmins/Bergevin were foolhardy enough to go for broke by selecting Mailloux after going to the SCF because that gives Montreal a top-10 pick, or so, when they certainly didn't deserve it.

Those two elements really help the rebuild, IMO.

Suzuki, obviously, a stroke of luck, apparently, for Bergevin who would have taken other players, perhaps, before Suzuki, had they been available, is a another stroke of luck for HuGo.

Beyond that, the current management also made their own luck (good or bad), by selecting Slafkovsky, Mesar, Beck and Hutson.

 

[McPhees Moustache]

71 points is 41st in the league, so far, this year.

41st highest paid in the league earns 8.5M.

Even if 71 points ended up 50th at the end of the year because of the few remaining games, 5oth highest paid in the league still earns 8M per season.

Dubois is not hot garbage as some are suggesting, with a smoke and mirrors value established for the player.

IMO, both Dubois and Suzuki have PPG upside (more so for Suzuki, IMO) and PPG players fall within the top-30 NHLers.

The top 30th paid player in the NHL is backstroke and he earns 9.2M!

Signing PPG upside players early as close to 8M dollars stands a chance to be a huge deal, even more so as the Cap ceiling goes up and upward pressure is applied to salaries in the near future (some upward pressure is already surely being applied in anticipation of the rising Cap ceiling).

If players paid 8M or less today don't quite reach the PPG status, they will just be playing on fair value contracts.

It's a win-win, provided there is at least a small progression. Otherwise, with no progression, it is not as big an overpayment at all as some make it out to be.

Should probably exclude goalies and defenseman in the comparison as they can't be expected to put up similar points. If you keep this among forwards I expect it to be closer to 7M/yr

 

[tazsub3]

With 0 defense? Yeah right

Seems you missing the young d core they are building
Now had you said a goalie , I would have agreed

 

[FerrisRox]

get rid of Anderson PLD is 3 times the player Josh his and will cost only 3mill more

Dubois - Suzuki - Caufield this is your 1st line

If the option is Josh Anderson or PLD, but PLD requires surrendering a 1st round pick to get him, I easily choose Josh Anderson, and it doesn't require any thought at all. Its a no-brainer.

My interest in Dubois plummets if he isn't being acquired as an unrestricted free agent.

 

[FerrisRox]

IHe's a 6'4" power forward who's only 25 -- every team in the NHL covets him.

I really bristle when I hear him described as a "power forward."

There really isn't a lot of physicality in his game. He uses his size to his advantage, no question, but he doesn't play a bruising game where he imposes his will like a classic "Power Forward." His game isn't going to wear down the opposition as they try to deal with his physicality. That's not what he does out there.

I think there are people in this thread that are really setting up a lot of people here that maybe don't know Dubois game very well for a disappointment.

 

[LaP]

Suzuki, obviously, a stroke of luck, apparently, for Bergevin who would have taken other players, perhaps, before Suzuki, had they been available, is a another stroke of luck for HuGo.

I think it was actually confirmed that Patch refused a trade to LA before he was traded to Vegas. What was the return? I don't know but it more than probably involved Villardi.

 

[ReHabs]

I really bristle when I hear him described as a "power forward."

There really isn't a lot of physicality in his game. He uses his size to his advantage, no question, but he doesn't play a bruising game where he imposes his will like a classic "Power Forward." His game isn't going to wear down the opposition as they try to deal with his physicality. That's not what he does out there.

I think there are people in this thread that are really setting up a lot of people here that maybe don't know Dubois game very well for a disappointment.

A 6'4" player that uses his size to his advantage is a power forward - they overpower their opponents with their size and strength (ie power).

The phenotype you're describing isn't real or sustainable. Shanahan did that sometimes, Primeau, Lindros, maybe some years down the like Lucic did it. But it's not a sustainable playing style. I don't see the fuss in splitting hairs unless you've been in this thread clutching at straws to make yourself heard that you don't approve of Pierre-Luc Dubois. Believe me, we hear you.

And you should try to listen to some of the arguments here -- for one, he's going to be coveted by every NHL team.

 

[sampollock]

PLD is a mystery till draft day

 

[Scriptor]

Should probably exclude goalies and defenseman in the comparison as they can't be expected to put up similar points. If you keep this among forwards I expect it to be closer to 7M/yr

Actually, it's the opposite. It would eliminate defensemen ahead of Dubois in scoring, raising it more easily to 8M a year.

If the option is Josh Anderson or PLD, but PLD requires surrendering a 1st round pick to get him, I easily choose Josh Anderson, and it doesn't require any thought at all. Its a no-brainer.

My interest in Dubois plummets if he isn't being acquired as an unrestricted free agent.

You have zero interest in Dubois, regardless. I've read your posts. Stay honest and younhave the right to your opinion. Spew BS and you don't.

Nobody is forcing you to want Dubois, only deconstructing any lame reasons why.

 

[Scriptor]

I really bristle when I hear him described as a "power forward."

There really isn't a lot of physicality in his game. He uses his size to his advantage, no question, but he doesn't play a bruising game where he imposes his will like a classic "Power Forward." His game isn't going to wear down the opposition as they try to deal with his physicality. That's not what he does out there.

I think there are people in this thread that are really setting up a lot of people here that maybe don't know Dubois game very well for a disappointment.

You don't have to play a bruising game to be a power forward - that's just your interpretation of a power forward.

Dubois' ability to attract two opponents to him, keep control of the puck, spot a line mate and dish the puck to him is a power forward trait.

If you don't agree, fine, but I won't have a discussion where your personal goal posts are what we can talk around and nothing else.

 

[habsfan44]

Sure, but the main point remains regardless of Bergevin/Timmins dislike. The rebuild started before Gorton/Hughes were hired.

Doubling down on an erroneous statement changes nothing , you're still wrong .​

 

[ReHabs]

If the option is Josh Anderson or PLD, but PLD requires surrendering a 1st round pick to get him, I easily choose Josh Anderson, and it doesn't require any thought at all. Its a no-brainer.

My interest in Dubois plummets if he isn't being acquired as an unrestricted free agent.

I'm so glad I didn't miss this post. Perfect Habs Fan commentary.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

PLD is a mystery till draft day

Even if we draft Bedard I want PLD too.