Dylan Larkin’s trade request has turned into a mess of his own making, and at this point there’s nowhere clean for him to land.
If things had gone the way Larkin wanted, he would already be out of Detroit. Instead, the situation has stalled out so badly that the whole thing has started to look absurd. The request that was supposed to force the Red Wings’ hand has done the opposite, leaving Larkin stuck and the market for him looking thinner by the day.
The problem started when he made his trade request public and handed over a three-team list. In his mind, that was the pressure point - the kind of move that would leave Detroit with no choice but to deal him, the way the Ottawa Senators did with Brady Tkachuk.
But that comparison never really held up. The Panthers wanted Tkachuk.
They did not want Larkin.
Vegas was never a real landing spot either. The Golden Knights could not have brought him in even if they had wanted to, because they had to re-sign Rasmus Andersson, which cost them 30-goal scorer Pavel Dorofeyev. With that move, Vegas no longer had the cap space or the trade capital to chase Larkin.
Minnesota remains part of the conversation, at least in rumor form. The Wild are still said to have interest, but Bill Guerin is not going to overpay for the 30-year-old. He’s already dealing with Quinn Hughes, and until that situation gets sorted out, he can’t seriously make a move for Dylan Larkin.
That leaves Larkin in a strange spot: not wanted back in Detroit, and not exactly being chased elsewhere.
He may end up as the cautionary tale for how a trade request can blow up in a player’s face.
There’s also evidence that the list of teams checking in was broader than the ones publicly tied to him. In The Athletic, Flyers insider Kevin Kurz wrote that Philadelphia kicked the tires on Larkin and got a firm no. If the Flyers were turned away, it stands to reason other interested clubs ran into the same wall.
And if those teams were to revisit the idea now, the price would not be the same as it was when the request first surfaced. Any offer would be weaker than what was on the table before.
At this point, Larkin has burned enough bridges that a real escape route doesn’t seem to exist. Maybe another team eventually steps up. But Detroit would have no reason to accept something like a couple of fifth-round picks just to move him.
The Red Wings might actually be better off letting him sit than making a bad trade just to get him out the door.
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