There’s a real rule for fans of rebuilding teams, and it should be placed somewhere near the team store, frankly.
“There’s going to be a lot of roster turnover as your team rebuilds, so don’t spend all your money on the team’s current roster players. If you’re considering spending a lot of money on an authentic jersey with authentic name and numbering, purchase an alumni jersey, with only one or two exceptions.”
When Dylan Larkin was at the heart of the Red Wings’ rebuild in his mid-20’s, Detroit was a team that surrounded Larkin with a core of players like Tyler Bertuzzi, Anthony Mantha and Andreas Athanasiou, and, slowly but surely, the Lucas Raymonds and Moritz Seiders of the world.
But just about everyone not named Larkin, Raymond or Seider has been traded, allowed to “walk” or retired, regardless of whether they’ve been players or members of the coaching staff.
That’s supposed to be the way of the world for all sports teams, but rebuilding teams specifically, and as the teams begin to exit their rebuilds, the rosters are supposed to slowly but surely stabilize. No more Bert-Ehn-Erne lines, no more Nedeljkovics or Berniers in net, no more Ben Chiarot as your first or second-pair defensema…Okay, maybe there are some exceptions to the rule.
But the young players who the team drafted are supposed to remain as building blocks, as the real cornerstones of the franchise. Maybe only two or three will remain over time, but the whole idea is that they’ll provide the foundation upon which the team is built.
I would argue that the Red Wings have already had too many “false starts” over the course of Steve Yzerman’s tear-down of Ken Holland’s Red Wings and slow, belated rebuilding of the organization from the ground up, both on and off the ice, for the team to blow it up yet again and start from scratch.
We’ve seen far too many players come and go as the wind blows, and as coach Todd McLellan has weathered two March collapses, and his job security may hinge upon avoiding a third straight springtime disaster, the team should be slowly but surely building its roster for the long haul, based upon a few foundational pieces and a supporting cast of prospects (the more, the merrier) and imported veterans alike.
That’s the way it was supposed to go for Dylan Larkin, but, somewhere along the way to the exit to Woodward Avenue, the Red Wings’ captain soured on the process.
Whether it was at the 2024-2025 trade deadline, earlier, when he and agent Pat Brisson negotiated his “lifetime contract” with the team, or this past season, when Larkin experienced Olympic success, something went very wrong in terms of the relationship between player and coaches and management.
Maybe it was all of those factors accumulating together, relative inactivity at trade deadlines, spring collapses, roster and coaching instability, and the GM’s insistence upon waiting things out until prospects were finally ready to take over for the most important of the imported veterans…
But we know from those whose resumes are impeccable that Larkin wants out now, at 29, going on 30 this July.
As a Red Wings partisan, I’m gonna be honest: the situation breaks my heart. The Waterford boy who spent his entire developmental career in the State of Michigan, and grew up to captain his hometown team…He should be witnessing the resurgence of a team that’s exiting its rebuild, if only slowly but surely.
For whatever reason, that hasn’t happened yet, and it feels almost unfair to both Larkin, the team and its fan base that he’s not going to be around to see the fruition of what he’s been waiting for.
But the GM who is loathe to speak with the media has a responsibility to maximize Larkin’s trade value amidst a desert-dry free agent marketplace, devoid of franchise-building pieces or centers of a first-and-or-second-line variety under or around 30 years of age.
Steve Yzerman isn’t going to explain what happened between him, the management team, the coaching staff and/or players and the Red Wings’ seemingly happy hometown captain until this is all over, if he explains himself at all, because that’s not how GM SY operates.
I sincerely doubt that Dylan Larkin will explain his situation in any sort of detail once he joins his new team, either, and that’s just the way Larkin operates, too.
So those of us who follow this team still wandering the desert of a lengthy, lengthy rebuild will be left with questions unanswered and hurt feelings all around as those #71 jerseys hit the clearance rack.
But I hope that we welcome whoever joins the Red Wings to the fray.
I also hope that the Red Wings’ coaches, management and players slap the captain’s “C” on Moritz Seider or Lucas Raymond, who’ve paid their own dues as they hit their mid-20’s, and deserve more from their coaches, management and teammates.
I’m always going to be a Dylan Larkin fan. I’m not going to view his decision to leave the franchise as a Benedict Arnold-style betrayal (as so many of us viewed Sergei Fedorov’s departure, for decades following the summer of 2003).
But I am going to have unanswered questions as to why it is that Dylan has chosen to break from a team that values the logo on the front of the jersey more than the name and number on the back…Because the name and number on the back became more important, or perhaps, because the captain’s “C” became too heavy.
We just won’t know. Dylan probably won’t tell us the whole truth, and neither will Steve.
So we’ll grieve the loss of the hometown captain, and we’ll move forward with the boys from Mannheim and Gothenburg. And we’ll hope that next year, at this time, Dylan Larkin’s team isn’t the only one making the playoff cut.
I think that’s all we can really hope for at this point.
It doesn’t mean that Larkin’s “defection” hurts any less, but this path forward at least offers some perspective for those of us who believe, like the Red Wings, that the logo on the front is gonna matter more than the name and number on the back over the long haul.
I hope.
