Quinn Hughes didn’t exactly hide where he stands on Dylan Larkin.
As the Minnesota Wild keep working through negotiations with Hughes, another name has stayed in the background: the Detroit Red Wings captain, who asked for a trade in June and is still on Detroit’s roster with training camp set to open next week. The Red Wings are also still searching for a new general manager, which has left the situation stalled. For Wild fans, the question is obvious - keep waiting, or move on?
Hughes offered a pretty clear answer during the NHL’s Player Media Tour in Las Vegas on Wednesday, when he spoke with Sportsnet’s Eliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas on the 32 Thoughts podcast.
“Larks has played in five playoff games [and] he’s going into his 12th season. It’s like, that’s the ultimate team guy,” Hughes said during an episode of the 32 Thoughts podcast.
“Like, seriously. Anytime would be lucky to have Larks.
Larks is one of my favorite people out there. So, if he ultimately makes a decision where he’s moving on or he stays, I think the Wings would be lucky to have him and if he moves on, I would take him in two seconds.
You watch him at the Olympics and…you know how much the guys love him, what a team guy he is, and then how he performs in big moments. Yeah, so that’s what I feel about Larks.”
That kind of praise carries weight because Hughes and Larkin were teammates on the United States Olympic team that won gold at the Milano Cortina Olympics last February. Their relationship goes back even further, though.
Hughes was a freshman at the University of Michigan when the connection started, and although the two didn’t actually play together - Larkin left school in 2015 - they met at a fraternity party in 2017. Larkin then took Hughes under his wing and told him to “pay it forward” as Hughes moved into his professional career in the 2018-19 season.
Both players have built impressive resumes since then. Hughes won the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenseman in the 2023-24 season. Larkin has become a three-time All-Star and a six-time 30-goal scorer, including a career-best 34 goals for Detroit last season.
The trade chatter has only grown because of the overlap between Hughes and Larkin and the Wild’s own interest in both players. Hughes is working on an extension, and The Athletic’s Michael Russo has reported that Larkin “wants to be in Minnesota.”
“He wants to be here. And so, that to me is what it comes down to,” Russo said during an appearance on KFXN on Sept.
- “Unless [the Vegas Golden Knights] swoop in, we know [the Florida Panthers] can’t afford him, and they don’t have interest right now.
So Minnesota might be the team unless he expands his [no-trade] list.”
There’s still plenty standing in the way of a deal. Detroit’s GM search remains unfinished, and the process took another hit when top candidate Jeff Greenberg decided to stay in his current job with Major League Baseball’s Detroit Tigers this week.
On Minnesota’s side, the fit is complicated by the price. The Red Wings are looking for “win now” assets, and the Wild may not have the kind of package Detroit wants.
Even so, a trade framework could involve 2023 first-round pick Charlie Stramel, Danila Yurov, and draft picks. The cap math is another hurdle, with Minnesota sitting at $1.15 million in cap space according to Puckpedia.
For now, Larkin stays in Detroit. But with training camp looming and Hughes publicly backing him so strongly, the pressure on Minnesota to make one last push is only increasing.
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