What I’m Hearing About Dylan Larkin, Steve Yzerman, and the Red Wings’ Next Move

League sources describe a long-standing disconnect between Dylan Larkin and Steve Yzerman as Detroit weighs how to handle its captain's request to leave.

Greetings from the Buffalo airport.

It’s been roughly 26 hours since news broke that Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin has requested a trade.

I wrote some quick thoughts yesterday, which you can read here if you haven’t already:

In the past 24 hours, I’ve been able to learn a little bit more having spoken to people around the league including agents, players, and team executives.

For starters, the frosty relationship between Steve Yzerman and Larkin is now public, but wasn’t much of a secret for people in the industry.

For example, there have been times players themselves have directly requested a trade. That wasn’t the case here, where Larkin’s agency, CAA, informed the Red Wings of Larkin’s desire to leave Detroit.

“They don’t speak unless they’ve had to, they haven’t for a while,” one agent said. “That’s kind of become common knowledge about the situation in Detroit. Steve and Larkin co-existed, but they didn’t get along at all, and that’s kind of been known by others for a bit now.”

It should be clear, that as of now, the Red Wings and CAA have been quiet as possible on this. No one has been willing to put their name on public comment, but multiple people in the Red Wings orbit and organization have been willing to confirm that Yzerman is indeed mulling over his options on how to handle this moving forward, and if he’ll even grant the request.

One of the bigger questions I’ve gotten from those within the Red Wings is how this even got out. Yzerman keeps everything very tight and close, almost to an intimidating level with members of the organization, and while CAA has had leaks before, they normally disperse those to media members that CAA represents.

Case in point, there’s never been a real explanation why the Red Wings traded Jake Walman a couple years back. There are some members of the Detroit organization that are still confused about that deal.

“When Steve makes up his mind and no one can change it,” one agent said today in Buffalo. “Once that happens, he’s going to do what he wants. So it’s going to be interested what he decides what he wants to do with this and Larkin.”

No matter what Yzerman decides, the Red Wigs future leadership likely now runs through Moritz Seider, and whether it’s this season or a bit later, I would highly expect him to be the next captain.

And while there have been thousands of posts/articles about the trade and what it might look like, as of now, it’s hard to get a read on any realistic destination or return. Larkin is one of the best centers in recent memory to become available in the trade market, he’s also gotten a very high profile from his international showings for Team USA.

That being said, it’s difficult to see how the Red Wings can “win” any Larkin trade. Detroit was in desperate need of a top-six center already, and now they will be in desperate need of two after a potential trade.