Columbus Blue Jackets’ Pierre-Luc Dubois Does His Job as Agitator Again
By William Espy
The Columbus Blue Jackets made quite a stir on social media on Saturday night, in part thanks to Pierre-Luc Dubois.
The Columbus Blue Jackets walked out of Washington D.C. with their second win of the season over the Washington Capitals through the three meetings to this point of the season. When they left however, they left quite an impression on the players and fans of the Capitals.
Evgeny Kuznetsov‘s bird celebration is fairly famous at this point, and he used it after tying the game at 1 with just over a minute left in regulation. That wouldn’t be the only time Capitals fans would see the celebration though. Artemi Panarin would score in overtime to hand the win to Columbus, and Pierre-Luc Dubois would slowly start the bird celebration which then spread to most of the team.
The celebration got noticed by many Capitals supporters and Twitter was flooded with complaints about it. As a result, it probably means mission accomplished for Pierre-Luc Dubois. Part of his job as an agitator, is to get the opposition off their game. The celebration is going to be a big part of the media in Washington and as a result, the players will have trouble ignoring it.
Next time the Jackets play Washington, they’ll be thinking about it. They’ll be angry about the celebration and as a result, they won’t be entirely focused on the game at hand. It’s similar to an enforcer “taking a number” back in the day and focusing on revenge on a single player rather than what they need to do.
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The reason Dubois started the celebration is simple, to get under the Capitals’ skin going forward. It wasn’t a mindless mocking of a star player, instead it was likely a long term strategy to help the Blue Jackets down the road; while at the same time having a little fun after a high stress game.