What a difference a day can make. Follow Pierre-Luc Dubois‘on the bench against Tampa Bay on Thursday, who saw him post a 3:55 time career break on the ice, it looked like business talks started to pick up around downtown Columbus. Now, it looks like he could get his negotiation request granted in the very near future. TSN Darren Dreger reports (Twitter link) that the Blue Jackets are approaching a Dubois exchange, with teams being notified that they are no longer being considered. He adds Winnipeg as one of the teams still in contention.
To that end, Aaron Portzline of The Athletic adds (via Twitter) that Columbus plans to make Dubois a healthy scratch for Saturday’s rematch with Lightning, if he’s still on the list by then.
At this point, the situation is well known. Although both sides were able to agree on a two-year, $ 10 million bridge agreement ahead of the training camp, Dubois’ request to be negotiated has not been rescinded. Although he said he would continue to play hard while waiting for a resolution, that has not yet happened, leading to what has become a public dispute.
The Jets have a pair of players who are believed to want to leave the wings too Patrik Laine and RFA Jack Roslovic; Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic suggests (Twitter link) that both players could make sense of being involved in the business if they ended up being the final destination. A return involving these players would certainly allow Columbus to obtain a substantial return, although it created a considerable hole in the middle, a position in which they are already weak. Meanwhile, Winnipeg would lose some firepower on the wing, but would have a second controllable center to put behind Mark Scheifele for the near future.
In a follow-up tweet, LeBrun adds that the Ducks also remain interested in Dubois. They have been interested since the beginning of this whole process and would certainly give them a much needed boost in the middle. They have just over $ 6 million in the LTIR room at the moment, by CapFriendly, but that amount will be reduced by $ 800,000 once Brendan Guhle Returns. This still leaves enough space to absorb Dubois, but just barely. That said, they are not a good option in terms of providing immediate value in a deal, although your pool of prospects has several high-quality prospects, including the center Trevor Zegras and defender Jamie Drysdale.
In his report, Dreger notes that this is a complicated process that can mean several different things. Depending on who is involved, there may be elements of a wage cap at stake, although a deal involving Laine and Dubois is something that both teams can afford. If there is no center coming your way, it is possible that another movement will have to be combined to give them one. And, of course, there are quarantine issues to deal with and plan for having different rules in different jurisdictions. Dreger suggests that this could be resolved as quickly as Saturday, so that Dubois’s poor performance last night could end up being the impetus that ultimately concludes the deal.