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Capitals: Pierre-Luc Dubois and the $59M risk to… surround Alex Ovechkin

WINNIPEG, CANADA - APRIL 01: Pierre-Luc Dubois #80 of the Los Angeles Kings looks on during the pre-game warm up prior to NHL action against the Winnipeg Jets at Canada Life Centre on April 01, 2024 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. (Photo by Jonathan Kozub/NHLI via Getty Images)

The Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins are in a similar position. They should be rebuilding, but they’re waiting.

Why are they waiting? Because the great Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby are there. The leaders of both teams want to surround them as effectively as possible to try to give them another chance to win.

And in the Russian’s case, it’s also to allow him to score his 895th career goal.

As a result, both clubs are falling behind to help legends of the sport avoid ending their careers with a club in the midst of a long rebuilding process.

But worse than that: the Capitals have just added Pierre-Luc Dubois to their organization chart. And that’s not a good sign, because even if there’s a chance he’ll become an impact player again, there’s a good chance it won’t work out.

And if it doesn’t work, it’s going to come back to bite them in the ass.

When you look at his contract, which was assumed 100% by the Capitals in return for Darcy Kuemper, it’s clear that he has no less than $59 million left to collect over the next seven years. He has received, as seen onCapitalsFriendly, nine of the $68M of his deal in L.A.

(Credit: CapFriendly)

The Washington Capitals let go their goalie who wasn’t getting the job done (Charlie Lindgren is the club’s only goalie on CapFriendly right now), but in real money, Kuemper will earn about four times less than the Quebecer by the end of his contract.

That’s quite a risk for the Capitals.

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If it doesn’t work out (like it didn’t work out three spots before), the Capitals will have taken a $59M gamble to help Ovechkin pass Wayne Gretzky. Let me get this straight?

That’s expensive by the pound, isn’t it?

We agree that for a club that bought CapFriendly, the Capitals didn’t make a truly friendly purchase. Nobody else would have done it, right? Right?

If we take the Canadiens as an example, more fans would have said no to the Kings if the call had gone out to the Habs for Brendan Gallagher, who has a bigger contract than Darcy Kuemper.

Why? Because if it didn’t work out in Los Angeles, where he must have felt appreciated as hell when the club rolled out the red carpet for him less than 12 months ago , will he be able to produce elsewhere?

This morning, speaking on BPM Sports, Renaud Lavoie mentioned that Dubois wasn’t a bus driver and that Alex Ovechkin was no longer in his prime to pull him up.

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Lavoie still thinks Dubois can bounce back, but I have my doubts. After all, even if he gets more playing time than he did with the Kings, he’s still having trouble adapting to a new club, and the Capitals don’t have a pretty line-up.

They’re going to rely too much on him to pull a bad club up.

Even if L.A. is where Dubois wanted to play, I believe him when he says he’s happy with his new start. And for the Kings to take his contract completely off the organization’s books is nothing short of a stroke of genius.

No, Darcy Kuemper may not be the eighth wonder of the world, but they didn’t make a mistake: they fixed their basic mistake. They were in the action to find a solution by saying that Dubois wasn’t a good fit in California.

But for the Capitals, I don’t understand it. If Dubois becomes a good player, we’ll throw flowers at them in due course. But until proven otherwise, it’s still a huge risk.

It’s even the kind of transaction that will make me re-evaluate the NHL. Saying “yes, but Dubois’ contract was traded anyway” could become a basis for proposing… outlandish transactions.

If Washington decides to rebuild in two or three years and Dubois isn’t producing, the Capitals will be biting their fingers because they’ll be stuck with his contract on the chopping block for a long time.

Let’s see what today brings. Can anything beat this?

Overtime

– Speak of the devil.

– Things are bad in Toronto.

– The Flames just haven’t had enough.

– Alouettes: victory as a marketing tool. [BPM Sports]

– Barclay Goodrow isn ‘t happy with the way he’s been treated.