"And I looked at her and I said, 'that's fine but I am.'"
A couple of years later, hanging in the basement of his Regina, Saskatchewan, home with his older brother, Dave, who was two years his senior, Dubnyk very matter-of-factly asked his brother which NHL team he was going to play for.
"He laughed at me and goes, 'I'm not going to play in the NHL. Nobody plays in the NHL.' I just looked at him and was like, 'huh, well, I am,'" Dubnyk recalled. "I just always had this mentality that I never thought for a single second that it's not going to happen."
Dubnyk manifested his future. A career that spanned 12 years, he spent six successful seasons with the Wild from 2015-20. Dubnyk ranks second in franchise history in games played (328), wins (177), save percentage (.918) and goals against average (.2.41) among goalies with a minimum of 150 games played. The 36-year-old announced his retirement on Saturday.
"Looking back, it's ridiculous how many things had to fall in place, even for everything to happen like it did," he said. "You look back on it like that, if I knew that when I was a kid, it would make it seem more overwhelming. But you can't think about that stuff. I never did. I just always had this naïve guarantee that I was going to play in the NHL."
Dubnyk thrived in being the last line of defense. Already a defenseman in youth soccer, he gravitated toward the crease, despite a natural skillset for smooth skating.
"I was always a pretty good skater," said Dubnyk. "Never had a good knack for scoring. I could skate around everybody and somehow hit the post, which is maybe what naturally brought me back to goalie."
At 9 he told his dad, a former goalie himself, that he was going to play in net.
"He was like 'no, you're not being a goalie next season,'" Dubnyk said with a laugh. "I liked the equipment. I ended up playing half the games as a forward and half the games as a goalie. I mean, I used to practice skate saves. When I was like in Peewee, I don't think I ever actually made one, but in practice we'd start on a knee and they'd shoot it and deflect it with the corner of your skate. I just loved it."
Dubnyk admired the legendary Curtis Joseph, but it was Calgary Flames' Fred Brathwaite who he fan-girled over most.
"He is the reason that I wore No. 40," Dubnyk said of Brathwaite, who he had an autographed stick and jersey from when he was a kid, and recently met this past offseason.
Dubnyk spent his junior career in the Western Hockey League with the Kamploops Blazers from 2001-06, and backed up Justin Pogge on the 2006 Team Canada World Junior Championship team.
In 2004, the Edmonton Oilers used the 14th overall pick to select Dubnyk at the NHL Entry Draft, but he would not make his NHL debut with the Oilers until November 28, 2009. His first career win came on March 19, 2010 against the Detroit Red Wings in a shootout, and on July 13, 2010 he signed a two-year extension with Edmonton.
Dubnyk bounced around from team to team after Edmonton traded him to the Nashville Predators on January 15, 2014. The Predators traded him to the Montreal Canadiens on March 5, 2014, and on July 1, Dubnyk signed a one-year deal with the Arizona Coyotes as a free agent.
"(Coyotes goaltending coach) Sean Burke helped me regain some of that confidence I lost in all the moving," recalled Dubnyk. "At the time (my wife) Jenn and I, and (our son) Nate were just kind of all over the place, so I was excited for the opportunity in Arizona."
But with the Coyotes struggling, Arizona traded Dubnyk yet again. This time, he found a home in St. Paul. A place he continues to call home today.
"Minny was and is great. We've met so many great people, great friends away from hockey," said Dubnyk. "I knew that a trade for me would be good career-wise as well. And I knew that Minny was a good team. A good structured team so I was able to really quiet everything down and take what I learned from Burkie over to Minnesota. It's such a crazy thing that you just start getting in a rhythm and rolling.
"I never thought about anything other than just playing hockey. It was kind of just this perfect storm where I was having fun, playing better each game and thinking about pushing and stopping and that was it. Never playoffs, never standings. I was just enjoying it while I was at it."
Dubnyk immediately made an impact. In 39 games he posted a 1.78 goals against average with a .936 save percentage and five shutouts and four playoff wins through two rounds. His standout year earned him a 2015 Vezina finalist nomination, and a fourth-place finish in the Hart Trophy voting. That same season he was named the Masterton Trophy winner for his perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.
From 2014-19 Dubnyk was one of the top goalies in the league, placing first in games played (317), second in games started (309), third in wins (174), third in GAA (2.35) for goalies with a minimum of 100 games played during that five-season stretch, and tied for fourth in shutouts (23).
His consistency and success earned him the beloved "Duuuuuuubs" chant from State of Hockey faithful at each Wild home game.
"They jumped on it right away. I remember my first home game in Minny, I remember I went out, the puck got dumped in slowly and I went halfway to the corner and just stopped it before the goal line for the d-men and everyone was just like 'Duuuuuuubs' and I was like 'holy,'" Dubnyk said with a smile. "I didn't even make a save. It was literally every time I touched the puck."
Is "Duuuuuubs" a Minnesota-original chant?
"I don't know. I think they were just booing me in Edmonton," Dubnyk laughed. "There's no real way to know. Maybe it was there but it might have just been booing, but it rolled over nicely."
Dubnyk was traded from Minnsota to San Jose on Oct. 5, 2020, where he played 17 games prior to being traded to the Avalanche on April 10, 2021. His final career win was May 1, 2021.
"Going through that final year in San Jose and Colorado where my family wasn't with me and I was away from the kids, it was miserable," he said. "I'd rather not play and be here than go do that ever again."
So what's next in retirement for the kid who was destined to be an NHL player? Dubnyk is committed to being hockey dad to his three-playing boys (yes, one is a goaltender). In between playing taxi driver, he joined the NHL Network as an analyst, so he's giving broadcasting a shot as well.
"I haven't been doing anything for like a year, I thought this was pretty straight forward," he joked. "It's pretty surreal to look back on though. Pretty cool."
