This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Pierre-Luc Dubois
Los Angeles Kings Center
Third overall in 2016, two organisations that traded him, and a median shot from eighteen feet.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | CBJ | 82 | 20 | 28 | 48 | +8 | 49 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 165 | 12.1 | 16:38 |
| 2018-19 | CBJ | 82 | 27 | 34 | 61 | +16 | 64 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 174 | 15.5 | 17:43 |
| 2019-20 | CBJ | 70 | 18 | 31 | 49 | -2 | 49 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 158 | 11.4 | 17:56 |
| 2020-21 | CBJ/WPG | 46 | 9 | 12 | 21 | -8 | 38 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 76 | 11.8 | 15:02 |
| 2021-22 | WPG | 81 | 28 | 32 | 60 | -6 | 106 | 15 | 0 | 6 | 233 | 12.0 | 18:55 |
| 2022-23 | WPG | 73 | 27 | 36 | 63 | +5 | 77 | 11 | 0 | 1 | 205 | 13.2 | 18:27 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 434 | 129 | 173 | 302 | +13 | 383 | 36 | 0 | 23 | 1011 | 12.8 | 17:37 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
27 goals and 36 assists in 73 games — 63 points — with Winnipeg, eleven of them on the power play. Plus-5, 18:27 a night, 205 shots at 13.2 per cent, 77 penalty minutes.
53.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 75th percentile, with his ice at 49-36 against an expectation of 47.14-41.70.
Six seasons, 434 games, 302 points, and consistent to the point of monotony: 48, 61, 49, 60 and 63 points in his five full ones. Nothing in the record says he is about to become something else.
He has now been traded twice, by both organisations that have employed him, and Los Angeles is the third.
The Finesse Game
205 shots at a median of 18 feet, 54 per cent from inside twenty and 16 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 34 shots on goal, 2 goals. Inside forty: 170 shots, 25 goals, 14.71 per cent.
49 tip-ins out of 308 tracked attempts — the second-highest redirect count on this roster. He plays inside the dots and takes the puck to the net, and at 6-4 and 220 that is a defensible policy.
91.7 mph at the 57th percentile. Ordinary, and beside the point at eighteen feet.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 220, and 77 penalty minutes in 73 games — the second straight season above seventy-five and a career pattern.
Top speed 22.3 mph, the 48th percentile; bursts 1.6 a game, the 75th; 2.84 miles a game, the 70th.
He is a large centre who plays a heavy game below the goal line and wins pucks on the wall by leaning on people. The penalty minutes come from that and from a temper that has been remarked on in three cities.
59.9 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 90th percentile — a favourable share in Winnipeg, and Los Angeles will not give him that.
The Intangibles
Third overall in 2016 out of Cape Breton, a departure from Columbus he asked for, a departure from Winnipeg he asked for, and a long-term contract in Los Angeles.
The production is not the question here; five straight seasons between 48 and 63 points settle it. The question is what a club is buying at that price, and two organisations have decided the answer was not enough.
What this book can measure says a good second-line centre with size. What it cannot measure is the thing both of the previous clubs traded.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
60% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“He plays inside the dots and takes the puck to the net, and at 6-4 and 220 that is a defensible policy.”
“He is a large centre who plays a heavy game below the goal line and wins pucks on the wall by leaning on people.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,026 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.1%
- 76th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.2%
- 73rd pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 49 for, 36 against. Expected: 47.1 and 41.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 12 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 76 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2022-23 · 73 games
- Top speed
- 22.3 mph
- 54th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.56 a game
- Distance
- 2.84 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.7 mph
- 77th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2022-23 with WPG · 1026 minutes at five-on-five
- Kyle Connor65%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2022-23
- The club
- WPG took 51.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.1% — 1.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,026 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kyle Connor | 55.3% | 48.5% | 47.6% |
| Josh Morrissey | 48.6% | 56.4% | 52.5% |
| Neal Pionk | 52.3% | 53.5% | 47.9% |
55.3% together, 48.5% for him apart and 47.6% for Connor apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
308 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 28 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 54% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.