- Detroit wants a first-line center back in any Dylan Larkin trade
- Florida, Minnesota, Vegas and Dallas have all talked, and none will pay it
- Read below for how the empty GM chair is freezing the whole thing
The Red Wings know exactly what they want for Dylan Larkin. Nobody is willing to hand it over.
Detroit is asking for a first-line center in exchange for its captain, and the four teams Larkin would actually waive his no-trade clause for have all passed, per Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press.
St. James spelled out the sticking point in her latest column on the standoff:
“The gist of the problem with trading Dylan Larkin… the Wings need a first-line center in return, and Larkin’s selected teams aren’t willing to part with their own players who fit that bill.”
Florida, Minnesota, Vegas and Dallas are the clubs on his list. All four see themselves as contenders, and none of them are shipping out a top-line pivot just to bring one back.
The Wild have an extra complication. Minnesota is trying to get Quinn Hughes locked up, which makes pulling a core piece out of that roster a tough sell right now.
Picks and prospects have not moved the needle either. St. James flagged the same problem a month ago, when Larkin’s list was still only three teams:
Part of that is a message to the room. Trading the captain for futures tells Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider a teardown is coming, and Detroit has no interest in sending that signal.
Larkin holds a full no-trade clause for the next two seasons and has five years left on a $69.6 million contract that pays $8.7 million a year. Leo Carlsson, Connor Bedard and Macklin Celebrini all signed between $15 million and $18.8 million in July, which turned that deal into one of the best bargains in the league.
He is coming off a career-high 34 goals and 67 points in 74 games. Detroit still missed the playoffs for a 10th straight season, and our look at the Larkin trade odds had the market betting he opens next year in a Red Wings sweater anyway.
Nobody has heard from Larkin since the Wings cleaned out their lockers in April, weeks before the trade request went public. Watch his end-of-season session:
The bigger freeze is that Detroit has nobody in the chair to make a deal. Shawn Horcoff is holding the fort on an interim basis while Chris Ilitch works through an outside search firm to find a permanent replacement for Steve Yzerman.
That opens the door to the other outcome nobody in Detroit wants to say out loud, which is a reconciliation. The next general manager could walk in, talk Larkin off the ledge and keep a 30-year-old franchise center on a bargain contract.
Whoever takes the job inherits the Larkin file, Simon Edvinsson’s next contract and a decade of missed playoffs.
