A wild weekend in the Dubois household leads to a son's homecoming

WINNIPEG - It was a busy weekend for the Dubois family.
As the news continued to heat up surrounding a potential trade to Winnipeg, Pierre-Luc was calling his dad, Eric - an assistant coach with the Manitoba Moose - constantly.
"He called me pretty much every hour to talk about where he might end up, if I'd heard anything in Winnipeg," Dubois said on Monday, following the first ice session of Moose training camp.
"He woke me up twice at night. The third time he called me I just muted the sound. I thought 'I have to sleep at some point.'"

Finally, on Saturday morning, the trade was official - Pierre-Luc Dubois was coming to the Winnipeg Jets.
"Me and my wife were really excited about having our son back in town. I was trying to remember the last time he stayed at home - he was probably 15 or 14," said Dubois. "We haven't had him that close for a really long time."
The closest the family had to that came when Canada went into the first Covid-19 lockdown near the beginning of April.
"We had the kids for five straight weeks," said Dubois, saying Pierre-Luc's sister left Montreal when the lockdown was imminent, and Pierre-Luc arrived shortly after.
"We bought two bikes, so we had three bikes and we'd go together. We'd ride in Assiniboine Park a lot. It was a good time, it was fun for the parents to have both kids with us. We could see our kids were reconnecting. It was quality time."

Now that quality time will continue, as the organization now has two father-son duos. Dave Lowry is an assistant coach with the Jets as his son Adam starts his seventh NHL season.
The Dubois dynamic will be a bit different with Eric on the coaching staff of the Jets AHL affiliate.
"My job is to help the next generation of defencemen for the Jets," said Dubois. "After that, I'm a dad. If he needs to talk and he needs to reach me, I'm there for him. That's the boundary. I'll be a dad first. There is a great coaching staff with the Jets and I'll let them do their job."
When Pierre-Luc was younger, he and Eric spent a lot of time together watching video. It wasn't so much that Eric was trying to drill defensive positioning or the nuances of the game into his son.
Pierre-Luc was just incredibly curious.
"He's always been very passionate about the game," said Dubois, adding that his son attended a school roughly 400 metres away from the rink.
"Instead of going home for lunch, he'd prefer coming to the arena and have lunch with me," he said. "He'd ask questions about why I'm getting that clip for tomorrow for practice or video meetings? He had a lot of questions about those things. He picked up early on about having a good stick on the ice, reading plays, positioning yourself in the right place on the ice - in the offensive zone and defensive zone.
"It's not that I coached him, he just spent so much time around me early on."
He describes his son as an easygoing 22-year-old when off the ice, but extremely competitive on it.
"Especially when he was young, he was a bad loser," Dubois laughed. "People were amazed how intense and how he'd get in trouble in minor hockey for getting two or three minor penalties in a game. Then off the ice he's very quiet, very jovial."
When Pierre-Luc first spoke to reporters after the trade, he said every visit the Blue Jackets made to Winnipeg meant a visit at home for one of his mom's home cooked meals.
"I'm sorry guys, it's not mommy's cooking, it's daddy's cooking," Dubois said with a smile.
The city of Winnipeg certainly made an impression on the Dubois family. Eric and his wife live in the city full-time, and Pierre-Luc called the city "beautiful" after his experiences on those many bike rides.
It seems the Jets have already built on that impression.
"He's happy to play here," said Dubois of his son. "He had a great conversation with Paul (Maurice). He's excited. It's a new chapter for him."