For Jordan Dumais, it should have been the best of times.
One year after being one of the last cuts from Team Canada’s IIHF World Junior Championship camp, Dumais was chosen for the team this past December. It’s every Canadian’s dream to play and excel at the wildly popular tournament, but when he reported for the team’s camp, where he was expected to be a first-line player, Dumais instead had to confront a difficult reality.
He could barely skate, the result of nagging hip and groin injuries stemming from a fractured hip suffered in a game when he was 15 years old. After playing through the injuries for a while, they finally reached the point they could not be ignored.
“This year, at the World Juniors or even during camp, I couldn’t even skate at that point,” Dumais said. “But I wanted to go through the tournament and go through the experience.”
Dumais did just that, though his effectiveness was blunted, with one of the highest-scoring players in juniors posting a goal and an assist in five games as Canada lost in the quarterfinals. And then, enough was enough, as Dumais elected to have surgery in January to repair the injury.
He’s still not 100 percent – the hope is that will happen by September’s training camp ahead of his first pro season – but Dumais is making progress toward that goal.
“I’m still recovering,” he said. “I think it’s a long process, obviously. We’re just taking it step by step. The goal is to be ready for next season.”
If he is, Dumais is another intriguing prospect in an organization full of them. The 2022 third-round pick had one of the most productive junior seasons in recent memory after being drafted, posting 54 goals and 86 assists for 140 points with Halifax of the Quebec Maritime Junior Hockey League in 2022-23. Not only was he named league MVP, he posted the third highest-scoring season in the Q since the year 2000.
The two to better him? Sidney Crosby and Alexander Radulov, who only have 28 NHL seasons and nearly 2,000 points between them.
The funny part is Dumais was on pace to even crush those numbers this year in Halifax, posting 47 points (16 goals, 31 assists) in 21 games with the Mooseheads before having surgery – all while nowhere close to 100 percent.
It’s been a long process to get back, perhaps even longer than expected. The hope when Dumais had the surgery was he’d return for Halifax’s time in the QMJHL playoffs, but he shut it down thanks to some nagging issues doctors wanted to let continue to heal.
The good news is Dumais is back on the ice, though he’s been held out of contact drills during the team’s development camp. He’s noticed a major improvement in how things feel during workouts, and he’s on what he believes is the road to recovery.
“Everything is a lot better,” he said. “At the end of all this, whether it takes six months or a year to get to 100 percent, I think it’ll be better.”
After development camp, he’ll return to the Montreal area to keep working out and trying to get to that mark, and his hope is to be cleared to be good to go by September. Considering the time Dumais has missed, Blue Jackets director of player development Rick Nash said he has a lot of work ahead of him.
“It’s tough when you’re injured and you can’t play,” Nash said. “Obviously, it’s a setback. We all know how hard it is to return from injury and how much work you have to put in on the ice and off the ice to get back up to speed. Jordan is going to have a big summer ahead of him once he departs from development camp and starts getting ready for training camp. He’s gonna have to work extra hard to get back to speed.”
If he does, the Blue Jackets clearly have a prospect on their hands who can make an impact with his offense. And when Dumais is fully healthy, he says he’ll cherish the chance to be back on the ice and do what he loves.
“I think just being away from the game (has been the hardest part),” he said. “I really learned a lot not playing the game and being away from it. I’ll never take it for granted. At this point, just try to get better and be ready for next season.”
