Once a Kings Fan Too
Joined: Jun. 2018
Posts: 40,322
Likes: 25,237
It is indisputable that right now, DuBois is underperforming his contract, and by a lot. That's not unusual for players moving to a new team -- look, for example, at Reilly Smith and Ryan Graves in Pittsburgh. Johnny Gaudreau went from 115 points in Calgary to 74 points in Columbus his first season (and from +64 to -33!!), and he's doing even worse this year. What differentiates DuBois from the truly bad contracts like Josh Anderson or Brendan Gallagher or Marc-Edouard Vlasic is that all of them are 30 years old or older and have been trending down for some time now; there's absolutely no reason to suspect that they're going to get any better. In contrast, because he's been in the NHL for 8 seasons and is on his third team now, people forget that DuBois is only turning 26 in May -- there is a good chance that like Tage Thompson, DuBois will improve on this season's performance. And to be honest, who expected DuBois to come in and record 80 points when his wingers have been youngsters like Arthur Kaliyev and Alex Laferriere and Alex Turcotte?
Full disclosure: I was against the DuBois acquisition when it was first rumored and pooh-poohed it because the fit seemed so obviously poor; I have an ACGM I drafted in July titled "Rob Blake Ruined This Team" still marinating in my unpublished ACGMs. Yes, the DuBois contract is a bad one, but far from being the worst in the League. The fact that I can think of only half a dozen that currently are worse isn't much consolation, though.