Montreal Canadiens Circling Back On Pierre-Luc Dubois?

The Montreal Canadiens have been linked to Pierre-Luc Dubois for years it seems. Things appeared to hit a fever pitch around last year’s NHL Draft, but that was just the beginning as it turns out.

At that time, Dubois was a restricted free agent with the Winnipeg Jets and his agent publicly spoke about how Dubois would like to play with the Montreal Canadiens one day. You don’t often hear an agent speak like that so it was clear that the player was looking to get out of Winnipeg.

Fast forward to this offseason, and Dubois is once again a restricted free agent and he has made it publicly known that he will not re-sign with the Jets. Once again, things heated up linking the Quebec born player with the Canadiens. The problem is, he can be an unrestricted free agent a year from now, so why wouldn’t the Canadiens just wait until 2024 and sign him instead of giving up assets for him now?

Things appeared to be heading in that direction, but then the Los Angeles Kings emerged as a candidate to trade for Dubois. Trade talks leaked out and even a couple of fairly prominent names from the Kings were mentioned. It appeared on Saturday night that a deal that would send Gabe Vilardi and Alex Iafallo to the Jets was imminent.

But, here we are on Monday afternoon and nothing has been finalized. In fact, a trade to Los Angeles seems less likely that it did on Monday. Darren Dreger of TSN reported that while the trade between the Jets and Kings is held up, the Canadiens have suddenly circled back as a potential landing spot for Dubois.

What could be the holdup here? Why would the Canadiens suddenly become involved again after a deal seemed close with the Kings? Well, perhaps there was a problem getting Dubois to sign with the Kings? If so, that would be good news for the Canadiens.

The best case scenario for the Canadiens in all of this is for Dubois to sign a one-year deal somewhere else. That would mean he wants to become an unrestricted free agent in 2024 and that would probably mean he is ensuring he will become a Montreal Canadiens player as soon as he possibly can.

Ideally, that would just happen in Winnipeg because we all know he doesn’t want to stay there long term. However, they seem to know that and want to trade him for something right now instead of losing him for nothing in 12 months.

Apparently, a Dubois deal is being complicated by some factor that is not public. That could be two teams haggling over a return. It could mean one team is bluffing like George Costanza at a used car dealership and pretending to walk away. It could also mean Dubois is refusing to sign a long-term extension because he desperately wants to play in Montreal.

We can only hope that is the case and the Canadiens either end up getting him at a bargain in the coming days, or he signs a one year contract somewhere else and ends up in Montreal as a free agent next July.

Whatever the case is, it was starting to appear Dubois would not be coming to Montreal at all a couple nights ago. Now, with Dreger reporting the Habs are still in the hunt, we could see him have his wish come true after all. We will have to continue to wait it out, but this NHL Draft is going to be fascinating for Canadiens fans.

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