Dylan Larkin has asked the Detroit Red Wings for a trade, and the market is already moving, with San Jose, Dallas, Utah, and Philadelphia among the teams that have surfaced with interest.
The report came from David Pagnotta of Hello Hockey on Saturday, and it lands at a complicated moment for Steve Yzerman and the organization.
David Pagnotta: Re Dylan Larkin trade request: I've heard San Jose; Dallas; Utah, Philadelphia to a degree...at least they have interest, I don't know if they're one of the teams.
Larkin is 29, signed at $8.7 million per year, and coming off a season where he put up 67 points in 74 games, including 9 game-winning goals and 14 on the power play.
That's not a player you want to trade. It's a player you build around.
But Detroit went 41-31-10 this season and finished 16th in the league overall. The Wings went 2-6-2 in their last 10 and closed the year on a three-game losing streak, including a brutal 1-8 loss in Florida.
At some point, frustration becomes a pattern. And patterns become trade requests.
Larkin posted 5 goals and 6 assists over his final 10 games. The production was there. The winning wasn't.
Steve Yzerman now faces the most uncomfortable decision of his rebuild
Moving Larkin ends whatever short-term competitive window Detroit thought it had. Keeping him while he's publicly checked out is arguably worse.
Dallas is the most intriguing name on Pagnotta's list. The Stars finished third overall at 50-20-12, and their top-six has real teeth with Robertson and Johnston already in place.
San Jose at 39-35-8 is a stranger fit. The Sharks don't look like a team one star away from anything meaningful, unless this is purely about landing assets.
Philadelphia and Utah both finished just inside the 92-to-98 point range, which puts them in that dangerous middle territory where you're not bad enough to rebuild and not good enough to contend without a significant addition.
Larkin went minus-3 over his last 10 games while Detroit's team was falling apart around him. Hard to read too much into that number, but it does reflect the broader problem.
Yzerman built this organization with patience. Losing Larkin now, five years into a rebuild that still hasn't delivered a playoff round win, forces a very public reckoning with whether that patience has run its course.
The full scope of interested teams from Pagnotta's reporting is here:
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What Yzerman does next tells you everything about what kind of team Detroit actually wants to be.
Will Steve Yzerman trade Dylan Larkin this offseason?
Also read on Markerzone.com:
The Dylan Larkin trade rumors are exploding after what just surfaced
