Dylan Larkin Can’t Have It Both Ways

Larkin doesn’t owe anyone every detail behind his trade request, but once it became public, he had to understand that refusing to explain anything would come with consequences.

For full disclosure, I wasn’t at Dylan Larkin’s media availability Thursday.

I was en route to Chicago, where I am right now, for some work with Elite Prospects covering the 2026 USHL Fall Classic. So I missed Larkin’s first in-person media availability since his trade request, and like many of you, had to take it via video or audio from other sources.

That’s why I kind of waited a bit, and slept on it, before figuring out what to write on what transpired, especially with Larkin’s unwillingness in that availability to give much clarity on anything.

So let me unpack that a bit, because my thoughts on this space and Larkin, have greatly evolved in the past few months.

Back in June, which you can read about here, I called the request a brave thing, maybe the bravest thing Larkin had ever done in his career. That sentiment was fueled by what it takes to request the trade away from his childhood team and city he’d grown to represent, but I also thought that at some point Larkin would at least own that sentiment.

Larkin’s answers to the media haven’t always been great, but I’d always believed that was based more in some uncomfortableness with the public part of the captaincy, he at least showed up and was very human about everything. The crying after the Tyler Bertuzzi trade might have been awkward, but it was at least a truthful human experience.

This, though, has become cowardice.

Larkin said he wanted to be truthful, that he wanted to give some explanation, which he immediately followed up with zero explanation at all.

The trade request he said was for personal reasons, but then refused to give any further explanation of what that meant. We didn’t need the full list of reasons, maybe there is something truly personal about this, but you can’t simply state media reports are wrong about it then refuse to give anything of substance back (I thought Nick Cotsonika voiced this extremely well in his question to Larkin about the situation, when he said I don’t care what’s been reported, I just want the truth.)

Larkin also said he didn’t want this to get out, which I struggle with how neither he nor someone in his close circle, his agent maybe?, didn’t stop at some point and make him realize that was impossible.

He’s a top-six center, American gold medal winner, and captain of the Detroit Red Wings, still one of the NHL’s iconic franchises. There was no way it was going to stay secret, whether he liked or not.

So Larkin is lying here, but I guess the deeper question is whether he’s lying to us or lying to himself. And if it’s the latter, you kind of have to question how his agency, Pat Brisson and CAA, somehow haven’t stepped in to save their client from himself during this public self-immolation of any good will Larkin ever had in Detroit.

There are many ways Larkin could have handled this yesterday, and while some paths still would have left a bit to be desired, he somehow found the route that pushed this all into a more awkward and frustrating purgatory that is going to hover over the Red Wings all season. Especially after Larkin refused to be open, at all, on whether reconciliation was even possible when sitting right next to the interim GM that has to figure it out.

I’m a nobody, a media member that happens to cover hockey, so my opinion doesn’t really matter much here. But I used to have a higher opinion of Larkin, I thought he was someone that owned up to his actions, was awkward in public, but still showed up and understood the dynamics of accountability. Part of me, I believe, expected that to happen at some point in this process, that at some point there would at least be some public accountability and understanding on something that, at it’s core, could never be truly private.

So, I don’t know what Larkin’s reasons are. Maybe it really is deeply personal. Maybe there are things happening behind the scenes that none of us will ever understand.

And I know, and will repeat, that he doesn’t owe us every detail of his life.

But he does own how he handles the situation once it becomes public.

I used to believe Larkin understood that. I believed the awkwardness was part of what made him human, and that beneath it was someone who understood accountability.

After Thursday, I’m not sure I believe that anymore.