Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

80

Pierre-Luc Dubois

Washington Capitals Center

Sixty-six points and a plus-27, one season after being bought out of a career.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18CBJ82202848+84960416512.116:38
2018-19CBJ82273461+166420517415.517:43
2019-20CBJ70183149-24910415811.417:56
2020-21CBJ/WPG4691221-8381037611.815:02
2021-22WPG81283260-6106150623312.018:55
2022-23WPG73273663+577110120513.218:27
2023-24LAK82162440-97070414611.015:42
2024-25WSH82204666+277640414214.117:18
2025-26 so far
Career598165243408+3152947031129912.717:18

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

20 goals and 46 assists in 82 games — 66 points at 17:18 a night, plus-27, with 4 power-play goals and 4 game-winners on 142 shots, and 76 penalty minutes.

53.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 85th percentile — the best mark of any forward on the roster. His ice went 42-40 against an expectation of 51.30-44.09 — nine goals of scoring missing and four fewer conceded.

The Finesse Game

142 attempts at a median of 18 feet with 53 per cent from inside 20 and 16 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 14.1 per cent. He takes his shots from where a 6-4 centre should.

46 assists is a career high and the best half of him. He protects the puck below the goal line and waits, and the pass out of the corner arrives when a teammate becomes open rather than before. 408 points in 598 games.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 220 and he forechecks with force. He finishes checks, he wins pucks on the wall, and he is very difficult to move off possession.

76 penalty minutes in 82 games, and 529 in 598 career games. He plays with an edge and a share of it crosses the line, and he is not a player anybody enjoys defending.

The Intangibles

Third overall in 2016 and 598 games across four organisations, having forced his way out of two of them and then had the worst season of his career in the third.

He is 27. Los Angeles traded him for a goaltender a year after signing him for eight years, and he responded with 66 points and a plus-27 on a club that finished first in the East. That is the most complete rehabilitation in this edition.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,121 minutes

Expected goals
53.8%
85th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
51.9%
73rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 42 for, 40 against. Expected: 51.3 and 44.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
93rd
Numbers
85th

The two rank him within 8 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 82 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1121 minutes at five-on-five

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, 2024-25

The club
WSH took 50.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.8% — 3.0 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,121 minutes at five-on-five — 78th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Connor McMichael53.8%53.8%48.3%
Tom Wilson53.8%53.8%47.7%
Aliaksei Protas54.1%53.6%51.1%

53.8% together, 53.8% for him apart and 48.3% for McMichael apart. McMichael was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for McMichael than for him.

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

229 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 22 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 54% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.