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Special time for Moose assistant coach Eric Dubois, with his son joining Jets organization

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Eric Dubois didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last Friday night, his phone ringing repeatedly with his 22-year-old son on the line, asking for advice.

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“He called me pretty much every hour to talk about where he might end up and if I had heard anything in Winnipeg,” Dubois said of his 22-year-old son, Pierre-Luc, who, at the time, was a Columbus Blue Jackets’ centre.

“He woke me up twice at night and the third time he called me I just muted the sound cause I had to sleep. It was kind of crazy to anticipate where he could be traded to. It was especially exciting for us to see that the Jets were involved in that race.”

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Eric has been part of the Winnipeg Jets organization, as an assistant coach with the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League, for the last four years.

He and his wife, Jill, live in Winnipeg full-time, so the idea that their son might get traded to the Jets was tantalizing.

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Sure enough, come Saturday morning, the Jets and Blue Jackets pulled off a blockbuster, with Pierre-Luc coming to Winnipeg in exchange for star winger Patrik Laine and 2015 first-round draft pick Jack Roslovic.

Father and son will now be working for the same organization and, for the first time in a long time, living in the same city.

“Me and my wife are really excited about having our son back in town,” Eric said. “I was trying to remember the last time he stayed at home and it was probably when he was 15 or 14 or something like that. We haven’t had him that close for a long, long time. It’s nice to see and I’m sure mommy was just as excited as I was. It was fun.”

Eric Dubois was his son’s coach when Pierre-Luc was growing up, but now the two will have little interaction, professionally.

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Eric, 50, handles the defence for the Moose, while Pierre-Luc is a two-way centre with star potential who will have no association with the Jets’ minor league affiliate.

“My boundary is that I work for the Moose, first and foremost,” Eric said. “My job is to help the next generation of defencemen for the Jets. So that’s my job. After that I’m a dad and if he needs to talk or needs to reach me, I’m there for him. But that’s about it.”

Pierre-Luc certainly wanted his dad’s advice as he was waiting on a trade from Columbus, where he had a sour relationship with tough head coach John Tortorella.

Manitoba Moose assistant coach Eric Dubois with Moose players Johnathan Kovacevic (4), Logan Stanley (7), and Jimmy Oligny (14).
Manitoba Moose assistant coach Eric Dubois with Moose players Johnathan Kovacevic (4), Logan Stanley (7), and Jimmy Oligny (14). Photo by Jonathan Kozub /Manitoba Moose

Pierre-Luc first asked for a trade during the off-season when talks for a long-term contract stalled. He then signed a two-year bridge deal, but didn’t rescind the trade request.

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It all came to a head last week when Pierre-Luc went through the motions on a first-period shift and Tortorella benched him for the rest of the game,

Eric hopes people won’t judge Pierre-Luc based on that shift alone. Like his son, he pointed to thousands of other shifts he’s taken in which he’s given 100%. He pointed out that Pierre-Luc actually generated two scoring chances on his previous shifts in that fateful game. Eric believes there’s much more to his son than the impression some people may have formed.

“He’s very easy going,” Eric said. “He’s got a great sense of humour. He’s easy to get along with. That’s what’s funny because people see how intense on the ice he is, especially when he was young. He was a bad loser so people were amazed how intense he was.

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“And then, off the ice he’s very quiet, very jovial and things like that. So people go ‘Wait a minute, he’s a totally different person.’ He’s an easy-going kid. Likes to laugh and be around friends. He’s got a very nice group of friends back home in Montreal and they’re all great kids. That’s pretty much how he is. He’s very low key but very friendly to be around.”

Pierre-Luc also has some familiarity with Winnipeg. When the NHL shut down last spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pierre-Luc rushed to Winnipeg so he could spend the time with his parents and sister.

The whole family was together for five weeks

“We just had a good time,” Eric said. “Like he mentioned (Sunday), we bought two bikes so we had three bikes and we’d go together. We’d ride Assiniboine Park a lot during that time. It was fun for us, as parents, to have both kids with us. We could see that our two kids also were reconnecting and spending time together. A lot of times they’d go in the basement together to watch a movie. Me and my wife would stay upstairs. It was quality time, as we say.”

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Pierre-Luc has often said that having a coach for a father helped mould him into the player he is today. He learned all about paying attention to details and doing all the little things right long before he had realistic dreams of becoming a pro hockey player.

“He’s always been very passionate about the game,” Eric said. “Early on, a lot of times I’d do video and he’d sit down with me and we’d watch video together and he’d ask questions.

“I think he picked up early on about having a good stick on the ice, at reading plays, at positioning yourself in the right place on the ice, whether it was in the offensive zone or defensive zone. That’s what he’s talking about right now, it’s not that I coached him, it’s just that he spent so much time around me early on.

“The school where he was going when he was very young was about 400 metres from our arena. So instead of going out for lunch, he’d prefer to come to the arena and have lunch with me. So we’d eat lunch, watch video and then as soon as his lunch was over, he’d go on the ice. That’s where he learned a lot, I guess.”

Twyman@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/Ted_Wyman

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