Month: June 2026

The Friday morning after Dylan Larkin’s request for a trade was made public has yielded a significant amount of the “blame game” going around the internet and sports talk radio.

Whose fault is it that the Red Wings’ home-grown captain has chosen to leave his team? Is it Larkin’s fault for being a 29-year-old turncoat, if not someone for whom the rebuild has passed him by? Is it Steve Yzerman’s fault for not bringing the rebuild to fruition sooner? Is it the fault of Larkin’s teammates, good or bad, for not holding up their end of the performance bargain? Or could it even be the fault of the coaching staff for not getting the best out of their players for two Marches in a row?

Folks, when a player-and-team divorce of this magnitude happens (and there are few divorces that are uglier than this one in terms of professional sports), everybody has egg on their faces, and there’s more than enough blame to go around. Attempting to dump all one’s frustrations and disappointment on one party just isn’t useful.

Is Larkin at fault for losing patience with the rebuild and wanting “out” for selfish reasons? Of course.

Is Steve Yzerman’s laconically slow rebuild to blame, given that Larkin was 19 when he joined the Red Wings, and is 30 years old on a still-rebuilding roster? Of course.

Continue reading There is no such thing as a no-fault divorce

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.

Continue reading The logo on the front vs. the name and number on the back, or why Dylan Larkin’s jersey’s going on clearance soon

Blog news:

My health conditions continue to improve, slowly, over time. I’m getting more energy back as the days and weeks progress, and I am at least at an every-other-day-is-not-so-bad point right now. I can function for a day, and then rest for a day.

I would like to get back to full-time blogging by the start of the 2026 NHL Draft on June 26th and 27th, to try to carry through the Red Wings’ summer development camp and free agency, and then…

I hope to use the “quieter” (this is a relative term) summer months to build up endurance energy-wise to figure out how much I’m going to be able to return to every-day blogging come training camp and the exhibition season.

Put bluntly, I have four motivators:

1. I miss blogging like crazy. It’s the only real outlet that I have aside from rendering care to my now 84-year-old aunt, and the blog gives me an identity, it gives me a voice, and it gives me a routine sharing coverage of the team I’ve been following since 1991.
2. We’re at a point where following the team at an advanced level takes so much time that it makes little sense to not share what I’m reading from around the world with an audience. There’s so much Red Wings-related stuff on the internet right now that it’s a job to read and respond to it all, regardless of whether it’s being shared, so if I can have a figurative microphone with which to offer my thoughts and start conversations, that’s a logical place to be for me.
3. Aunt Annie supports what I want to do, regardless of whether that’s being an every-day blogger or an every-couple-of-days opinion-sharing blogger (which may end up being what I do if the energy level never really returns to near-normal). Aunt Annie and my therapist alike know that this blog is good for my mental health, and as someone who deals with chronic mental illnesses, it’s not just a creative outlet or a, “Hell, might as well share the information that I’m reading” outlet–it facilitates my mental health.
4. Finally, it’s too expensive to be a Red Wings fan following every source that I’ve subscribed to without doing this to at least “break even” money-wise. I can’t afford my subscriptions to MLive, the Free Press, the Detroit News, Detroit Hockey Now, The Athletic, ESPN, etc. etc. without your help, because I’m making minimum wage as a State of Michigan-employed caregiver for Aunt Annie, so it’s imperative that I provide coverage that’s worth both your time and some level of fiscal support.

As of June 4th, that’s where I’m at in terms of hoping and praying for and working toward a return to the blog. I hope that you’ll continue following as I make my way back behind the laptop over the course of the next month.

I am stunned and gutted by the news from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman that Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin has requested a trade from the team.

As a fan, I can’t tell you enough good things about Larkin. I believe that, over the course of his 9-year 11-year tenure with the team, he’s done nothing but give 100% for his coaches, teammates and fans, and he’s been bloody proud to wear the Winged Wheel and represent the team as its captain.

I don’t know where things went south between captain and team, though ESPN’s Emily Kaplan offered some significant hints as to why the relationship between the captain and the management team has gone sour.

All of that being said, as both a fan and a blogger, I believe that the Red Wings are in a tricky position right now–in terms of maximizing 29-year-old Larkin’s value, amidst a dry desert of a free agent marketplace.

Larkin is a #1 center in the right situation, and he’s a 65-to-75 point-scorer and 25-goal-scorer, and while he’s made his desire to leave the Wings for a fresh start clear…

We all know that GM Steve Yzerman isn’t going to be backed into a corner. He’s going to ask for a top-of-the-line return, which includes the usual: a strong roster contributor, a prospect, and a first-round draft pick.

Yzerman can ask for that much because of Larkin’s “motor,” on and off the ice, as a driver of play, and he cannot settle for less just because Larkin’s demands have become public.

He’s a trade asset now (and a trade asset with an affordable contract under the ever-expanding salary cap), and whether you loved him or loathed him, especially because the free agent marketplace is so incredibly dead, it’s going to be up to the Red Wings’ management to hit a home run while accommodating the captain’s wishes for a new start.

Again, as a fan, I’m genuinely sad and hurt about Larkin’s decision to choose a different path. But as a pseudo-analyst of the team, I want my team to do its damnedest to treat Larkin like nothing more than an asset that is to be leveraged for a maximal return.