Dylan Larkin Just Doubled His Trade List to 10 Teams. Detroit Still Has Nobody Permanent to Make the Deal.
Dylan Larkin asked the Detroit Red Wings to trade him in June. Four months later the list of teams he will accept has grown from three to 10, and Detroit still has no permanent executive with the standing to move him.
Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press reported Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the situation, that Larkin has expanded his list to 10 clubs. The original three in June were Florida, Minnesota and Vegas, with Dallas added shortly after. The six recent additions are Carolina, Colorado, New Jersey, Tampa Bay, Utah and Washington.
Montreal is not on it, even though Canadiens fans cheered Larkin when Detroit visited on Oct. 10. Larkin has said before that he is unwilling to play in Canada, the likeliest explanation, though nobody has reported it as the reason.
Everyone says soon. Nobody says done.
Michael Russo of The Athletic went on KFAN in Minneapolis on Tuesday and said, “I think it’s gonna happen soon,” citing sources who told him there had been a conference call with the Red Wings in recent days. He did not say which team was on that call. He added that he still believes Larkin wants Minnesota, which is his read rather than confirmed reporting.
ESPN’s John Buccigross got there first. On the Frankly Hockey show on Oct. 16 he said, “I think there’s going to be a trade within 7 to 10 days in Detroit,” and when pressed on the name, answered, “Yeah, Larkin. Larkin. That’s coming.” One caveat that keeps getting dropped: Buccigross never named a destination. Every Larkin-to-the-Wild headline stacked on top of him is somebody else’s inference.
So several well-sourced people expect a trade and no team has confirmed one. None of it is real until Detroit announces it.
The holdup is the price and the cap
Larkin carries an $8.7 million cap hit. He signed an eight-year, $69.6 million deal with Steve Yzerman in March 2023 that runs through 2030-31, leaving five seasons including this one, and he holds a full no-trade clause through 2027-28. That clause is the only reason his list matters.
Minnesota has roughly $487,000 in space against a $104 million ceiling, with a Quinn Hughes extension coming. Russo said it plainly earlier this month: “You’re probably going to have to give up money in the deal.”
Detroit’s ask, per Darren Dreger of TSN on Oct. 15, runs to three or four pieces, including two high-end prospects, an NHL-ready top-nine forward and a first-round pick. The Wild’s tradeable assets are mostly prospects and picks, the mismatch Russo has described for months: “The problem is the Wild’s assets are what they are.”
The real obstacle is that nobody is in charge
Yzerman stepped down as general manager in mid-July and moved to senior advisor. Shawn Horcoff was named interim GM on Sept. 15. Owner Chris Ilitch is still looking for a president of hockey operations and has said, “I’ll make the hire when I find the right person.”
Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff put it bluntly: “We don’t have anyone that’s actually equipped to make the decision right now.” Asking an interim general manager to trade the franchise’s longest-tenured player for a package that shapes the next five years is a fair thing to hesitate over.
Detroit is 3-3-2, last in the Atlantic Division, and has not reached the playoffs since Larkin’s rookie season of 2015-16. He was stripped of the captaincy in September once the request went public, and the Red Wings opened this year with no captain. He has a goal and two assists in six games, and he was booed at home in his Oct. 6 debut before scoring and assisting in a 5-3 win over Ottawa.
Larkin is 30, in his 12th season, all of it in Detroit, with 646 career points. At camp in September he said, “I asked for a trade from the Detroit Red Wings as the captain.” He has since tripled the number of places he will go. The next move belongs to a front office that has not hired the person whose job it would be.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
