WINNIPEG — Gabriel Vilardi started the week in great spirits, joking with reporters about how well-liked he was in Los Angeles.
“I think I’m a nice guy,” he laughed. “I think most guys like me so I don’t think anyone’s gonna be going after me.”
It was delivered humorously, although with a tinge of oddness. Vilardi was the biggest part of the Winnipeg Jets’ return for PL Dubois in this summer’s blockbuster. He’s only 24 and, for the first time in his career, Vilardi was getting ready to face the team that drafted him, developed him and gave him his shot in the NHL.
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“It’ll be weird but once I get out there it’s just hockey,” he said.
He had no idea what kind of pain would come next.
After starting the game on a made-for-the-occasion line with Alex Iafallo and Rasmus Kupari, it didn’t take long for Vilardi’s night — and potentially his season — to turn on its head. Five minutes of game time later, Vilardi followed a Mark Scheifele pass into the corner to Connor Hellebuyck’s left. As he approached the corner, Vilardi was hit by Blake Lizotte and fell awkwardly, appearing to twist his right knee in the process. He left the ice under his own power but Vilardi was unable to put any weight on his right leg.
Video of the Vilardi injury pic.twitter.com/xdzNwrr7xu
— Michael Remis (@mremis) October 18, 2023
Vilardi will be re-evaluated on Wednesday but his loss was well-felt throughout Winnipeg’s 5-1 loss to the Kings. Tuesday night was Winnipeg’s first truly miserable game of the season, with every turn seemingly scripted to cause maximum pain. A positive start was erased by Vilardi’s injury, then got much worse in the second period. L.A. dominated early, outshooting the Jets 12-4 in the second period on the whole.
But the Kings’ first goal came just as Morgan Barron’s interference penalty ended, with Barron joining an exhausted group of Jets penalty killers that spent nearly two straight minutes in Winnipeg’s zone. The penalty itself was an odd call — Barron put a hit on Carl Grundstrom, who had the puck — but it was not the most disappointing part of the play from the home fans’ perspective.
As Barron raced onto the ice and L.A. drove the puck to the net, Dubois got to a rebound in the slot and scored his first goal for Los Angeles. Dubois raised his arms and celebrated in front of a group of fans in Kings jerseys. The Kings went on to dominate the second period and take a 5-0 lead in the third and the only thing that stopped Dubois’ goal from being the game-winner was a late goal from Scheifele that the Jets didn’t have the heart to celebrate.
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Long term, the Jets should be just fine — pending Wednesday’s update on Vilardi’s health, of course.
Vilardi’s new teammates certainly felt his pain.
“Every time a teammate goes down it sucks,” said Nikolaj Ehlers. “Gabe is a guy who has been through a lot. I know exactly how that feels. It’s tough for him right now. I don’t know what exactly is happening, but obviously I hope the best. It sucks for us, because he has proven what he can do for us.”
“He’s a great guy, so just to see that happen you feel awful for him,” said Cole Perfetti, sporting a fresh cut after being boarded by Andreas Englund. “I’m not 100 percent sure what it is, but he looked like he was in a little bit of pain. Just praying for the best and hope it’s nothing serious and whatever it is he has a speedy recovery. We need him back in our lineup because he is such an elite player.”
That’s what makes Vilardi’s injury such a shame and such a concern. He’s fit in so well with Scheifele and Kyle Connor on the Jets’ top line that it’s easy to imagine long-term chemistry, big point totals and a team that’s a thrill-a-minute to watch. Iafallo has been a dogged forechecker, chipping in a deflection goal against Calgary while Kupari has shown well and set up a goal against Florida.
Dubois’ arrival in January 2021 may have been meant to bolster Winnipeg at centre, giving the Jets a one-two punch that rivalled the NHL’s top teams and solved the team’s forward depth. His biggest gift to the Jets on that front may have been the trade request that led to Vilardi, Iafallo, Kupari and the second-round pick they squeezed out of the Kings.
We know a lot more about Dubois’ story now. He was set on dictating his long-term playing future well before he got to Winnipeg. Depending on who you talk to within the Jets’ room, Dubois’ determination to play elsewhere was either an open secret or not a secret at all. Lately, Bowness has made a concerted effort to remind reporters that everyone in Winnipeg wants to be there. It seems reasonable to think it’s an advantage when everyone is pulling on the same rope, in the same direction.
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It also seems reasonable to believe Bowness has been referring to Dubois.
“He made it no secret that he wasn’t going to sign a long-term deal here,” Bowness told me on Monday. “When he comes out and says that, he just didn’t want to be here. He was going to move on when he could.”
Since that time, I’ve spent the past couple of days recruiting Jets players’ opinions about Dubois’ departure. They’ve told me that Winnipeg didn’t have a formal meeting to address Dubois’ future, the way Dubois told me Columbus did with respect to Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky in 2018. They all just sort of knew, one way or another, that Dubois was on his way out.
But if you’re looking for a Jets player to put Dubois on blast for leaving, you won’t find it here.
“I don’t think his situation was an issue for us last year at all,” Josh Morrissey said. “Maybe this is just my opinion but, at some point, everyone’s got to do what they have to do for their own careers, for a number of different circumstances.”
Dubois’ situation is unique: He picked his path prior to UFA status. He leveraged his unwillingness to sign a long-term deal into a forced trade to a market of his choosing. From the players’ perspective, these details don’t seem to matter — what matters is who is in the room and how hard they’re trying while they’re there.
“Whether you agree with it, don’t agree with it, that doesn’t really matter,” Morrissey told me. “Everyone’s got their own set of reasons. Whether that’s family-wise or opportunity on the ice or off the ice. All of those different attributes or pieces of the pie chart come into play and everyone has their own set of those. As a teammate, you respect the fact that when the guy’s in the locker room, I did feel like he always gave it his all. There was never an issue.”
I wondered aloud if Morrissey was speaking extra-conscientiously. I asked him if it was hard to speak critically, given his need to focus on his own team and his own performance.
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He dispelled that pretty quickly.
“I’m not giving you a politically correct answer to avoid a rivalry with the Kings or something like that,” Morrissey said. “If I felt that he wasn’t all-in when he was here, then I would easily say that. For me, for my situation, I love playing in Winnipeg. I love being here. But everyone has their own thing. That’s the way I truly see it. My bigger issue would have been if, when he was here, he was not trying or trying to force his way out by being an issue, either on the ice or off the ice, and I didn’t feel he ever did that. In fact, I thought he was a great teammate. That’s where I have respect for him.”
Connor shared that sentiment of respect. He wishes Dubois would have stayed — they played great together — but doesn’t begrudge Dubois his reasoning. Connor seemed a little bit more guarded in our interaction but said the same thing: Dubois’ situation was never a distraction. It’s not lost on Connor, either, that he’s playing with a talented new teammate in Gabriel Vilardi on Winnipeg’s dynamic top line.
It’s clear that Vilardi and Connor have developed offensive chemistry together. Scheifele has been dialled in to start the season, too. Look further down the depth chart and Iafallo may be Winnipeg’s best forechecker and Kupari made a big play in the lead-up to Barron’s goal against Florida on Saturday. The new guys are fitting in — great news, given that Vilardi, Iafallo and Kupari are going to be a much bigger story in Winnipeg in the future.
One of the points Connor made was that there is only so much attention that a hockey player — or any person, for that matter — can pay to outside noise. Eventually, to have success, they have to focus on their own job and their own role. We were in the middle of our conversation about Dubois but I asked Connor what he does to help maintain balance. He pointed to time spent outdoors and I thought of Hellebuyck and the way the two Michigan men have taken to enjoying outdoor time in Manitoba.
Iafallo, who is from the Buffalo area, is joining them on that front. Hellebuyck beamed a couple of weeks back about Iafallo catching catfish at will and even pulling a sturgeon out of the Red River. But let’s take the new Jets’ commitment to Manitoba one step further.
The day I introduced myself to Iafallo, I told him that his offseason looked like the most fun. First, there was the part where he found out about his trade to Winnipeg while hiking in the Eastern Sierra Mountains. Then more and yet more outdoor adventures. Iafallo told me he grew up that way, catching the outdoor bug from his parents. We talked about outdoor adventures and then, when I told him I grew up in Manitoba in a small town called Pinawa that was on a river and in the middle of the woods.
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“I know Pinawa,” said Iafallo, a Manitoba resident of barely two months. “I went camping not too far from there.”
It turns out that Iafallo spent the tail end of his summer exploring the Whiteshell, camping in Nutimik, and was stunned by the tranquillity and calm. Talk about having both feet in one’s current environment.
Back to Dubois. One of the things I was surprised by on Tuesday was how directly Dubois pointed at the Jets’ trade return for him as a positive.
“The reality of it is that guys go in free agency and they leave for nothing. The Jets got three players from the Kings,” Dubois said. “I think the Jets fans are happy they got that in return instead of nothing. I think those guys will help the team for now and in the future, and I wish them nothing but the best. That’s just how it goes sometimes in the business. I’m happy the Jets got what they wanted out of it.”
And perhaps, as bluntly as that struck me, that’s the truth: Everyone got what they wanted out of this trade. Dubois got his Los Angeles life. Winnipeg got a quality package, including Vilardi, Iafallo, Kupari and even Montreal’s second-round pick in 2024. The fans got a team of players who want to be in Winnipeg and who look to be playing a fast, aggressive, exciting brand of hockey.
Dubois’ arrival was supposed to give Winnipeg a deep, overpowering group of forwards. It probably could have worked out that way. As memory rusts, Dubois’ biggest gift to the Jets may become a list of the players Winnipeg got back for him.
He chose and he left, leaving the Jets’ depth in great shape — especially if Winnipeg gets good news about Vilardi on Wednesday.
(Photo of PL Dubois and Mark Scheifele: Jonathan Kozub / NHLI via Getty Images)
