This afternoon, Sean Shapiro offers an intriguing correlation between soccer and hockey on his Substack blog, discussing Team USA’s twitchy performance in yesterday’s World Cup loss to Belgium as it might relate to the Red Wings’ general twitchiness when it comes to hitting bumps in the road…
As in, specifically, how the team might react to the Dylan Larkin situation:
The Red Wings have also been overly impacted by outside noise, Larkin included, the past few years and players have admitted as much. The culture of losing has infected Detroit in now annual March collapses, and players have taken the moments of booing and internalized them, frankly, in the wrong way and been almost indignant about it.
Yes, the Red Wings need better players, that’s a direct line from Steve Yzerman, but they also need a locker room that takes that adversity and either gets pissed off about it or uses it to find a solution.
I rarely get angry at the Wings, but when Andrew Copp started to suggest that it was “outside noise” from the media and fans that was partially at fault for this past March’s second half collapse, and, of all people, Moritz Seider used the line, I became really, really angry.
I don’t ever want to hear, “It’s not our fault that we’re struggling, it’s that we have to deal with this shit from the media” line, especially when we’re talking about the Detroit media corps, which affords the Wings far more benefit of the doubt than most every other media corps (I will explain “why” another day).
The Red Wings get more softballs thrown their way than almost any other team, and the “why that is” is complicated, but I can only say that the media atmosphere in Detroit is particularly team-friendly…
So the suggestion that you’re struggling because you’re reading your own press, and you don’t like it, and you’re hearing the boos, and you don’t like it…
That’s giving up in my book. And that’s unacceptable. I hope that Copp and even Seider got chewed out at some point by the coaching staff, because the “outside noise” is something that professional athletes deal with all the time.
Criticism and critiques come and go, and if you’re believing your own press instead of believing in the locker room, your head is not in the right place. For reasons that are beyond us, the Wings got “off message” late in the season, and that’s very, very concerning, because coach McLellan is the right man for the job IMHO.
Anyway, Shapiro continues:
Larkin, I believe, used to be the type of person that would have looked at it the other way, and wanted to dig his way out. But he eventually reached his breaking point, and I think it impacted others, and it greatly muted the intended “culture import” that the Red Wings tried to bring with return of David Perron at the trade deadline.
Perron was so banged-up that he could barely skate as the Wings rushed him back from abdominal surgery. I don’t bet money on things, but I would take a $10 and bet that he was not at 100% when he was skating at a snail’s pace for the Wings in March and April.
We can also talk about whether Larkin himself “gave up” on the season after coming back from the Olympics, and I do believe that he wasn’t giving 100% after the Olympics, but that’s a topic for later this summer.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, my opinions have changed a bit here and there, and when it comes to Yzerman’s promise that he must do “what’s best for the Red Wings,” I think we’ve reached the point where for the Red Wings to have a proper narrative, which doesn’t drive the team negatively during the 2026-27 season, a deal needs to be done before training camp.
It’s not apples to apples to what happened with Team USA, an a short tournament is very different than an 84-game season, but to me there are some prime examples in front of Yzerman right now about how to at least put his team in a better spot to avoid the outside noise becoming internal, again.
I’m of a different mind here, though I respect Sean’s wisdom regarding the situation greatly.
As I said on Twitter/X today, I don’t expect that Yzerman is going to make himself available to the media until the Larkin trade happens, because he’s got the luxury of dictating if and when he speaks with the press.
Unlike Ken Holland, who returned every phone call, Yzerman has a much more standoffish relationship with the media, and, as I’ve been saying, the Wings’ front office has become like a nuclear submarine–there are very few to no leaks of air bubbling up from the depths. So we’re not going to hear his take on the situation for a while.
Whether it’s Russo or HSJ or Friedman or anyone else, we’re getting “news” from Pat Brisson’s camp here. The Wings don’t leak.
And, getting back to my first thought on this whole damn thing, I believe that we are most likely going to see this play out into the 2026-2027 season, and that the team will have to suck it up and battle through a semi-negative environment without Larkin around.
That’s just my feeling as to what’s going to happen, barring a late-summer trade either involving a team that’s willing to trade one or two players who can “Help Now” (see: Florida finally giving up Eetu Luostarinen or Anton Lundell) or enough “futures” that Detroit can flip ’em for some “Help Now” players from a 3rd team.
