Dylan Larkin is expected to be in the lineup for the Red Wings tonight against the Ottawa Senators, as long as he gets the green light from doctors, according to Elliotte Friedman.
That update lands after Detroit made two roster moves, one of which put the center on injured reserve. Head coach Todd McLellan had already told Max Bultman of The Athletic that Larkin would miss the first two games of the regular season after suffering an upper-body injury just before training camp. Because the IR move is retroactive to August 15th, Detroit can activate him whenever it wants, and McLellan had already hinted the club was hopeful Larkin would be back for its third game of the season on October 6th.
Larkin was on the ice at practice skating on the top line with Lucas Raymond and Viktor Arvidsson. The other injury notes from the team: Marco Kasper and Mason Appleton are out week-to-week, while J.T. Compher is day to day.
If Larkin does suit up, it would be his first game in a Wings sweater since asking for a trade. His request was the summer’s first major NHL shocker, but for now he’s still listed with a Winged Wheel beside his name, and his expected return makes a deal look far from imminent.
The Waterford, MI native put up 67 points in 74 games last season and finished at plus-3. He’s spent 11 seasons with Detroit, and after that stretch he was stripped of the captaincy, which he had held since the 2021 season.
The split between Larkin and the organization had been building for a while, with tensions between him and GM Steve Yzerman eventually leading to Larkin wanting out. Yzerman, in turn, lost his spot as the team’s hockey operations manager earlier this summer while trying to find a trade destination for his star center.
Earlier in June, Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press reported that Larkin wanted to be dealt to one of three teams: the Florida Panthers, the Vegas Golden Knights, and the Minnesota Wild.
Then Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic reported that the list of preferred landing spots was short, and Ansar Khan of MLive.com later added the Dallas Stars to it.
Larkin did not want to go into the reasons behind the trade request when speaking with Max Bultman, and he made clear he still wasn’t prepared to explain it all. He said:
I understand that there’s answers that fans and people that care about this organization around the world want to know, but I’m really not ready to go there. And it’s maybe something that I may never be, you know?
And it wasn’t easy to get to that decision. It was very hard.
It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. I don’t take what I did lightly, and I got to that point, and I’m not quite ready to talk about it.
No move materialized, and Detroit has opened the 2026-27 season at 0-2 after losses to the Winnipeg Jets and New York Rangers. Before the opener against the Rangers, Larkin was introduced to a Little Caesars Arena crowd that booed him as he waved from the bench. Now the question is how that same crowd will react if he’s on the ice in the jersey he’ll wear for the 809th time in his career.
If Detroit activates him from injured reserve, it will also need to clear space on the roster. The Red Wings currently have 13 forwards and eight defensemen, so another roster move would be needed once Larkin is back.
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