“I just love the way they play. I love the way they time the game.”

The Washington Capitals made one of the first big moves of the 2024 NHL offseason this week when they signed Darcy Kuemper for Pierre-Luc DuboisThe Capitals will be Dubois’ fourth NHL team, even though the center turns just 26 in a few days.

Over the course of his career, Dubois has learned what types of players he enjoys playing with. His most eye-opening experience came at the junior level with the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles of the QMJHL, where he played on a line with Russian wingers Evgeny Svechnikov and Maxim Lazarev.

In 2021, when he was still a member of the Winnipeg Jets, Dubois sat down for a preseason chat with Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek about the 32 Thoughts Podcast and discussed how playing with the two Russians changed his overall attitude toward hockey.

“They taught me how to play, in a way,” Dubois said. “They gave me the shit when I chipped a puck, a simple play. They yelled at me. First they yelled at each other in Russian and I knew exactly what they were talking about. Then they told me and gave me the shit for it.”

After finishing his junior career in the QMJHL, Dubois quickly earned a spot with the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Quebec native made his NHL debut with the club just one year after being selected third overall in the 2016 draft.

In Columbus, Dubois was on a roster with one of the NHL’s most outstanding Russian players, Artemi Panarin. Panarin joined him via trade during the same offseason that Dubois was preparing for his first professional season, and the two eventually developed a great bond on the ice.

“I think my first year in Columbus, Torts was trying to find a player to play with Panarin,” Dubois said. “He was mixing different players in and I was the only one who wasn’t playing with him. I just thought, ‘I can play with him.’ I know how to play with him. I know it’s the NHL compared to juniors, but I know how to do it. The first game I played with him, I played really well and we won in Buffalo and we just kept going after that.”

In this first game together against the Buffalo Sabres, both Dubois and Panarin scored goals. At five-on-five, 81 percent of shot attempts, 84.1 percent of expected goals, 84.1 percent of scoring chances and 78 percent of high-danger chances were saved. Columbus won the game 3-2.

“It was the same as with Breton, he would mess with me when I chipped the puck or passed it, but I just love the way they play. I love the way they break the game down, the passes they make, the things they try. I just love that breaking game down.”

The totals behind the duo’s play in Columbus back up Dubois’ story. In 1,700 minutes of five-on-five play with Dubois and Panarin on the ice together over two seasons, the Blue Jackets had 56.4 percent of shot attempts, 56 percent of expected goals, 56.7 percent of scoring chances and 54.4 percent of high-danger chances. Columbus outscored its opponents in those same minutes, 96-65.

Dubois set the Blue Jackets’ new franchise record for points in a rookie season with 48 points (20 goals, 28 assists) in the 2017-18 season, and his 20 goals were more than the 17 scored by Rick Nash in his freshman season (2002-03). The following year, Dubois scored 61 points (27 goals, 34 assists) in 82 games that season.

“You see the Russians playing in ‘Miracle’ and stuff,” Dubois said. “They just alternate and that’s how it felt. At first I thought, ‘OK, we can try,’ but then it went better and became more natural. Then I got to the NHL with Panarin. For him, it was, ‘Stay wide out. When you’re on your one-timer side, stay wide out and don’t get too close to me. I’m good one-on-one, don’t get too close to me. I can win my battles and find space. I can beat my opponent and then someone else has to come at me and then I’ll find you.’ I love playing like that. It’s fun.”

Now that Dubois is a member of the Capitals, he has the opportunity to play with the greatest Russian player of all time, captain Alex Ovechkin. Washington also has Ivan Miroshnichenko, Alex Alexeyev and Belarusian Aliaksei Protas poised for important, regular NHL roles in the coming seasons.

After Panarin left Columbus in 2019, Dubois was no longer on a team or playing with a top Russian talent, but he still kept what they taught him and implemented it with players of different nationalities on the Blue Jackets and Winnipeg Jets.

“That’s what I try to tell the guys,” Dubois said. “Don’t get too close, because I like those one-on-one situations in the corners. I find that if you’re too close, you can’t beat your opponent, because if you beat your opponent, the other guy is right in your face because your teammate is right there.”

“So it’s like getting everyone under one roof. You could get five guys under one roof if they were all close together, but when you expand the zone, mistakes can happen, you have to read players. I think reading is how you make mistakes and create space. For these guys, that’s the point of the game.”

The Capitals are banking on Dubois to return to the offensive skills he showed earlier in his career, and he’ll likely get the chance to do so with Ovechkin sitting on his left side as a passenger. Ovechkin is also still chasing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goal scoring record and last year saw the two most important playmakers of his career – Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov – leave the team’s lineup in quick succession.

Head coach Spencer Carbery tried almost every center left on his roster with Ovechkin towards the end of the 2023-24 season without much success. Dubois’ signing will hopefully allow him to better position his team in the middle and move the more shooting-happy Dylan Strome to a different line.