In the early hours of Saturday morning, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported an agreement between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Winnipeg Jets that would see Pierre-Luc Dubois on the move, as previously speculated. Along with a third-round draft pick, the centreman was traded to Winnipeg for Patrick Laine and forward Jack Roslovic.
What do the Winnipeg Jets get with the acquisition of the Quebec-born forward? Pierre-Luc Dubois is a 22-year-old centre, who not only wins a lot of board and puck battles, but is also able to score and with ease. In 239 career games, Dubois has tallied 159 points, amassing 66 goals along with 93 assists.
Essentially, Winnipeg gets a few seasons worth of Dubois, who is a restricted free agent for two more years, so he commands a salary of $5 million per season. This trade means that Blake Wheeler and Mark Scheifele transition as the core centremen moving forward for the Jets, while potentially bumping Wheeler to the wing, allowing him the room to grow and to potentially score more. Dubois, at worst, has scored 48 to 61 points a season, and given his young age, this could see him increase that rate to 55 to 75 if the chemistry formulates well.
Jack Roslovic is another young player, who, much like Dubois, also wanted to move teams. At the NHL level, he’s a 14-29 point winger, so a very decent bottom winger at that. The bigger name in exchange is the one who joined him, Finnish native Patrik Laine. Laine fits the hockey club’s sniper needs since Artemi Panarin left, joining the New York Rangers. The Central Division just got more fire power, as the right-handed shooter joins the Blue Jackets in Columbus.
What this really means for the Blue Jackets is that they can rebalance their bottom line with Jack Roslovic while doing the same with their top forward lines, adding Laine. Laine, 22-years-old, is a young sniper who needed a change of scenery and now gets to play for Finnish GM Jarmo Kekalainen. That definitely makes it make a lot of sense for a young winger such as Patrik Laine to learn from his GM and get a lay of the land for a tough as nails in John Tortorella.
It’s worth noting that Patrik Laine is the kind of guy who can easily manage to score 50 to 70 points in a full season. His personal season goal total was 28, and with his highest at 44, there is certainly more to be seen. Personally, I really like what both hockey clubs received in return as a result of the deal.
Patrik Laine brings that true sniper to Columbus, meanwhile, on the other end is Jack Roslovic, who brings more scoring a bottom-six line. Pierre-Luc Dubois is the power forward that has the speed, skill, talent and grittiness, that if Winnipeg were to make a playoff push, he could help guide the team and propel them through the opening round.