Thursday’s news that Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin has requested a trade is an earthquake to begin the Red Wings’ offseason.
Start with the shock that the homegrown, hometown captain could be on the way out after 11 seasons with the team. Over the last decade, Larkin has been one of the few constants in the organization — through coaching, management and roster changes — and is the only player remaining from Detroit’s last playoff appearance in 2016.
Through the darkest days of the years that followed that last playoff berth, Larkin was a pillar of the Red Wings’ hopes for the future: first as the young engine at the center of the rebuild, then as the veteran trying to get the team over the hump.
His success with Team USA at the Olympics, where he played a key role for the gold medal-winning Americans, showed what he could do in the highest-stakes hockey, and it seemed like only a matter of time before he got his chance in the Stanley Cup playoffs with Detroit.
Now it looks like that moment may not come. No trade has happened as of yet, so we’ll have to see what this saga has in store. But typically, a request like this leads to action.
Certainly, the Red Wings’ losing has appeared to wear on Larkin as the playoff drought has dragged on, and he and general manager Steve Yzerman seemed to clash at the end of the 2024-25 season in their year-end news conferences. Larkin spoke about the Red Wings’ lack of action at the 2025 trade deadline, lamenting the lack of on-ice spark or morale boost at a crucial time of year, while Yzerman responded by saying, “I’m counting on our best players, our leaders, to give us a bit of a morale boost. That’s what they’re paid for, and that’s the expectation from them.”
In the year since, though, Yzerman traded for starting goaltender John Gibson at last summer’s draft, then made an aggressive move at the trade deadline to acquire veteran defenseman Justin Faulk. The Red Wings showed promise, spending much of the season in a playoff spot. But with Larkin (and multiple other key players) injured down the stretch, Detroit nonetheless missed the playoffs for a 10th straight year.
While Larkin’s history with the team underscores the surprise of the news, it’s his present (and future) role that makes it so consequential.
He is the team’s unquestioned No. 1 center, a player who has five consecutive 30-goal seasons, and there is no obvious heir to that lofty role in the system, meaning he would have been expected to remain their top center for years to come. So if a deal does come to fruition in the coming weeks, it would change everything about the Red Wings’ outlook.
Detroit already entered the offseason in need of help, needing at least one top-six forward and a retool of the bottom six. Now, the Red Wings could be looking at much more dramatic changes.
The playoff drought looms large in all of this, as fans have grown frustrated at the lack of success in seven seasons under Yzerman’s leadership. But if the Red Wings trade Larkin, the path to immediate contention becomes much more complicated.
For instance, while this year’s free-agent class is weak, there are some high-profile names expected on the trade market this summer who were already notable for the Red Wings. But now, even if Detroit were to acquire a splashy winger such as the Dallas Stars’ Jason Robertson, there would still be a glaring question as to who would center the top line.
The Red Wings did draft two young centers with top-10 picks in 2022 and 2023 in Marco Kasper and Nate Danielson. But Kasper struggled through a sophomore slump after a strong rookie season and may be better cast in the middle six than on the top line, while Danielson has just 28 NHL games under his belt and finished the season injured. Both will be just 22 next season.
Detroit could instead pursue another top-line center via trade, such as the St. Louis Blues’ Robert Thomas, but that would essentially get them back to where they are now — a little younger, but still with major holes to fill just to get into the playoffs.
Perhaps the Red Wings could pull off multiple such moves, using both their current prospect capital and the return from a potential Larkin trade to try and add multiple difference-makers. That’s certainly one approach to this, albeit an ambitious one. But it’s also entirely possible the Red Wings are left to take a step back now and retool, acquiring younger players or draft picks for Larkin and taking their lumps with an inexperienced roster next season. If that’s the case, it would test the patience of fans and perhaps ownership.
With a cluster of young prospects and players aged 19 through 25, though, Detroit could instead turn its attention to finding another young center with top-line potential and look to retool around its younger core.
This strategy, of course, would not be foolproof. Young players can be hard to predict in their development timelines, and with young stars Moritz Seider (25) and Lucas Raymond (24) entering their primes, a step back could risk wasting their best years in the same way Larkin’s were.
And while Detroit’s record without Larkin in recent seasons suggests they could be in line for a high draft pick in a season without him, the Red Wings still have enough good young players that could keep them from truly bottoming out — and they’ve seen firsthand that there are no guarantees with the draft lottery.
Combine that with Larkin’s no-trade clause, which gives him a measure of control over a potential trade process, and this is going to be a challenging situation for the Red Wings to manage.
The first and most important question is whether they plan to honor the trade request. But it’s followed by so many others: How many teams would Larkin agree to be dealt to? How will that affect the potential return? And what does all of this mean for Detroit’s direction in the short- to medium-term future?
There are still three weeks until the NHL Draft, when trade activity tends to pick up, and four until the start of NHL free agency.
With Thursday’s news, the Red Wings will now have to spend that time effectively re-charting the course of their offseason — and potentially their direction as a franchise.
