The Dylan Larkin trade chatter around Minnesota had been building for weeks, but it never got to the finish line before NHL free agency opened. And once the reported asking price came out, it was hard not to see why.
According to NHL insider Nick Kypreos of Sportsnet, Detroit’s price for Larkin would have required the Wild to send back Matt Boldy. That’s the kind of ask that stops a deal before it really starts.
Kypreos reported that the Red Wings would have had no issue moving Larkin to Minnesota if the Wild were willing to include Boldy in the package. Beyond Boldy, he said, there was not much else Detroit GM Steve Yzerman was interested in.
That would have been a massive swing for Minnesota. Boldy is only 25, nearly six years younger than Larkin, and he just turned in the best season of his career. In 2025-26, he scored 42 goals and finished with 84 points, along with a 10.7 point share.
Larkin has been a productive player in his own right, but his résumé doesn’t match those numbers. The 2014 No. 15 overall pick posted his best NHL season in 2022-23, when he scored 32 goals and had 79 points. Last season, he put up 34 goals and 33 assists, which also gave him a career-best point share of 8.0.
Even with that production, Larkin has never hit a 40-goal season or an 80-point season, and he’s never reached a double-digit point share. Boldy, meanwhile, looks like a player who could make those marks routine.
There’s also the contract angle, and it matters here. Boldy is locked in at $7 million per season through 2029-30, which only makes the idea of moving him for Larkin look even tougher from Minnesota’s side.
So if Detroit was truly holding firm on Boldy as the centerpiece, the whole thing starts to look like a non-starter. And if that was the real demand all along, it raises the obvious question of why the Wild spent so long waiting around for a deal that was never likely to happen.
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