One of the big storylines of the 2023 NHL offseason is the Winnipeg Jets and what they would do with their stars. It seems as if they are ready to unload a bevy of players, a few of them being core pieces for the last few or even several years, to try and turn the page to the next iteration of the franchise. That includes Pierre-Luc Dubois, and the much-rumoured trade to Los Angeles finally materialized:

The extension went through and Dubois is now a King. Let's break down what it means for both teams and fantasy owners.

What Los Angeles Gets

It can feel like $8.5M a season for Dubois is expensive but it's roughly what Sebastian Aho is making now and the cap will rise a lot in the next couple seasons. A cap hit of $8.5M three seasons from now will not be the same as an $8.5M cap hit in 2023. The near-term cap implications are very real, but with an eye on 2026 and beyond, this is reasonable enough. It does give them some cover regardless of what Anze Kopitar decides to do following this last year of his contract.

It can also be hard to get a grips on the type of player Dubois is. This is a 25-year-old third overall pick with three seasons of at least 27 goals and 60 points and he'll be playing for his third team in four years come October. Thanks to the bench changes in Winnipeg, Dubois had four coaches in three seasons dating back to the very end of his Columbus tenure. Regardless of the cause of all the changes, it makes it hard to get a grip on what he can do.

Tracking data shows that Dubois, almost regardless of coach or team, is the one that does the heavy lifting in the neutral zone to transition into the offensive zone. In fact, the percentage of Dubois entries that he carried into the zone himself – didn't pass off or dump in – was 78.7% in 2022-23. For context, Connor McDavid finished at 79.5%, Kirill Kaprizov was at 79.4%, and Tim Stutzle at 76.5%. A lot of controlled entries can help create a lot of offence. The problem in Winnipeg was that they struggled to create scoring chances off those controlled entries, and Dubois was below average in that regard. Carrying the puck at an elite rate is nice, but if that translates to below-average scoring chance rates, then it's a lot of wasted minutes. The team was better off when Kyle Connor carried the puck in, so maybe some deferral would have been better for everyone involved.

The second problem with the 2022-23 Jets was they refused to play off the rush. They generated about as much off the rush as Columbus and Chicago, if we want to get more specific. Dubois can play off the forecheck, but he played way more off the rush under Paul Maurice. Both he and Connor did, in fact, and maybe there's a reason why Connor had his worst goal-scoring season of the last six years, on a per-game basis.

Dubois's per-minute assist rate at 5-on-5 from 2019-2022 was 1.04. That tied him with Brock Boeser and Chris Tierney, or a middling second-line rate. His rate this past season was 1.07, so there could be playmaking concerns here. Not that he's awful in this regard, but for $8.5M a season, the Kings are probably are looking for a higher per-minute assist rate than Barclay Goodrow's.

There is a bigger question of where Dubois fits on the 2023-24 Kings roster. If Anze Kopitar and Phillip Danault both stay down the middle, is Dubois the third centre? Do they move Danault to the 3C position? Do they use Dubois next to either Danault or Kopitar?  Last question: Los Angeles has notoriously struggled to finish their 5-on-5 chances for many years now. If Dubois's playmaking is as he has shown for several years, and doesn't improve on a new team, how much can he really help low-percentage shooters like Viktor Arvidsson or Trevor Moore?

This assuredly ends any hope of Quinton Byfield being a centre for Los Angeles in the near-term. It might be something they re-visit if Kopitar leaves/retires next offseason, but with Alex Iafallo and Gabriel Vilardi gone, they need help on the wing, and Byfield seems like he's locked there now. It is also a swap of Dubois for Vilardi on the top PP unit, though the Kings did run to relatively equal units for much of the season.

It will be curious to see if Dubois gets Fiala as a winger. The line of Kempe-Kopitar-Byfield was excellent in the second half of the regular season and they could just run that back. What if Fiala gives Dubois a 20% production boost? More on that in a minute.

Any centre prospects the Kings have left (Alex Turcotte?) just got the answer about what the team thinks of their development. There is at least one open roster spot now, though, just because of the balance of the trade. It's good news for my fellow Arthur Kaliyev enthusiasts.

What Winnipeg Gets

The star of the package is Gabriel Vilardi. He had a breakout season with 23 goals and 41 points in 63 games. He finished third on the Kings in points/60 minutes at 5-on-5, which was easily at a top-line rate, and in the neighbourhood of names like Alex Ovechkin, Troy Terry, and Travis Konecny. Shooting 18.3% helped immensely, but he also shot at least 10% at 5-on-5 in the parts of three seasons he had played prior. However, just dropping to 13%, a first-line rate, cuts his scoring immensely. It is the danger of banking on a player that has only has one good season; what if he’s a 12% shooter and not a 16% shooter? On top of that, Los Angeles's goal scoring went down 38% when Vilardi was on the ice without Kevin Fiala. The catch here is that Los Angeles's goal rate dropped less than 20% when Kopitar was on the ice without Fiala, and goal scoring actually went up with Danault on the ice without Fiala. In other words, Vilardi benefitted from playing with Fiala to the tune of a per-minute production boost of 23%. He was still good otherwise, but that was a big reason why his numbers looked as good as they did. Again: can Fiala do that for Dubois? If he can, PLD could be a 30-goal, 75-point fantasy centre. Considering how elite Fiala is offensively, it’s certainly not impossible.

A bonus for Vilardi is he doesn't play off the rush as much as Dubois and would probably fit better in Winnipeg's offensive system than Dubois did. The negative is wondering what, exactly, is left of the Winnipeg roster when October rolls around. If this is the start of a true tear-down, Vilardi could be on the top line with Cole Perfetti and playing a lot of minutes. It is just a matter of how good the rest of the team is around them. That is to be determined.

This could be a boost for Alex Iafallo's fantasy value but he is facing Vilardi's line-mate problem, just further down the lineup. He averaged 46 points every 82 games over his last four seasons in Los Angeles, and that was playing nearly 18:30 a night in the 263 total games. He can score a bit and provide defensive value for the team, but it's hard to see this being anything more than lateral for Iafallo, if not a small downgrade.

Rasmus Kupari will get a better chance at meaningful fantasy minutes on a deserted Winnipeg team than he would in Los Angeles. He also produced a worse points/minute rate over the parts of three seasons he played in the NHL than David Kampf, Adam Erne, and Anders Bjork. He could play in banger leagues as his hits per minute are similar to Timo Meier and Owen Tippett, but he needs to produce something to be worth the 120 hits he could reach with more ice time. He'll need to earn the ice time from Bowness, so nothing is a given here.

It’s hard to say what this will do to the Winnipeg roster when it seems that Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, and Nikolaj Ehlers could all be on the move, at the least. In a vacuum, it should make the roster harder for prospects just because of the volume of players coming in, but if they trade a top scoring line for picks/prospects over the summer, it eases a lot of the burden. It certainly leaves them with a hole in the centre position and would, ostensibly, give Brad Lambert at least a puncher's chance at making the team out of training camp. That is presuming that Kupari isn't a lock as the 2C. Or the 3C. Or even the 4C.

Who This Helps

Rasmus Kupari

Brad Lambert

Pierre-Luc Dubois

Arthur Kaliyev

Who This Hurts

Phillip Danault

Gabriel Vilardi

Alex Iafallo