Columbus Blue Jackets: 3 intriguing landing spots for Pierre-Luc Dubois

The Minnesota Wild

Alright, alright; I get it. “Pierre-Luc Dubois to the Minnesota Wild, how original.” Well, you know what? Why mess with a classic?

There’s a reason these two parties have been linked together so often: Because it just makes too much sense.

The Minnesota Wild are a pretty good team. They have a decent mix of young and old players, have a promising head coach in Dean Evason, who is four games into his first official season as a full-time head coach, and have played surprisingly well in the new West Division desperately waiting for a fourth team to punch their tickets to the playoffs alongside the Vegas Golden Knights, the Colorado Avalanche, and the St. Louis Blues.

They also have a collection of players with varying degrees of tradeability that the two parties could negotiate over from Mat Dumba to Kirill Kaprizov, so both parties could conceivably leave a perspective deal with more or less what they want moving forward.

The Wild, in the opinions of many, are a center away from being a legitimate contender in the West/Central Division. They also have the money to lock up PLD on the kind of contract he’d like moving forward and a clear ‘face of the franchise’ role just waiting for someone young player to come in and take.

Pierre-Luc Dubois can unquestionably fill that role if he’s fully committed and locked into playing for Minnesota. He can also give the team a clear direction to build their roster around moving forward, as opposed to their current strategy of spinning their wheels in the mud a little harder to try to break free from their middle-of-the-road status.

If the Wild can turn in a package sweet enough to get the Columbus Blue Jackets to surrender PLD’s services, it could go a long way to making Minnesota a perennial playoff contender once more.

Would it work? Who knows, but it is the very definition of an “intriguing landing spot,” which is the whole point of this list.