I almost threw my phone while reading yet another inflammatory clickbait headline suggesting that “the Red Wings hit another new low” on Sunday.
As in, “The phone was in my hand and I was ready to throw it because I could not stand reading the latest piece of bullshit so that my readers don’t have to click on that stupid clickbait headline.” I nearly did throw the damn thing at a wall.
This has been a tumultuous summer for the organization, and, just as importantly, importantly, the fan base. Mostly because Dylan Larkin is not going to reveal his motivations for requesting a trade to the media, nor will Steve Yzerman explain the how’s or why’s or when’s of his decision (and it was probably his decision) to step down as GM…
We’ve got about a hundred clickbait websites taking a single Tweet or a single written line from an article and insisting that THIS NEW NEWS WILL EXPLAIN EVERYTHING AND NOW EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED (click me, click me, click me!).
I cannot emphasize enough that 99.9999999999% of this bullshit is just that–bullshit.
The truth of the matter is that we will not know what happens with the Red Wings’ front office until a new general manager is named, regardless of whether it’s in the form of a single person as a GM, or whether the organization hires both a president of hockey operations and a more analytically-minded manager of day-to-day hockey business.
The truth of the matter is that we will not know what happened behind the scenes between Dylan Larkin, Steve Yzerman or the rest of the Red Wings’ management or ownership even if there is a trade, and/or he is not traded, because Larkin is also a private person (though not quite as solitary as the GM who only seems to have kept his own counsel) who isn’t going to spill the beans about what appears to have been a particularly frosty relationship with the GM.
At best, we are all making educated guesses as to what will happen from here on out at this point, and that’s not just me who’s guessing as best as we can. I’d bet my subscriptions to MLive, the Free Press, the Detroit News, Detroit Hockey Now, The Athletic, etc. etc. that even their esteemed beat writers are, technically speaking, at or nearly as much so “in the dark” as to what happened and why it happened as we are.
They have more sources, and better sources, than you and I do among their networks, but between a general manager who spoke with no one and a captain who spoke with very few, they have about as many quotes and quips to go upon as we do.
The last time Steve Yzerman talked to the media, he explained that he wasn’t going to take any questions about Dylan Larkin’s situation. Yzerman then gave his explanation as to what his job involved as the team’s GM–to best represent the interests of the organization–and we know that, a couple of weeks later, somebody, probably Yzerman himself, decided that, for whatever reason, Yzerman wasn’t going to be the person to see the Larkin situation through.
Why do this in the middle of July? Why step down without naming a successor? Why do this with Larkin’s situation unresolved…And why do this, for shits and giggles’ sake, without having inked restricted free agent Simon Edvinsson to a contract extension, either?*
I mean, there are things that the Red Wings still have to do in terms of shoring up their roster, whether it’s re-signing Edvinsson, determining the future of Alex DeBrincat 11 months before he hits unrestricted free agency, deciding whether to look for an Eeli Tolvanen and/or some other secondary scorer to replace what production Patrick Kane provided during his tenure here in Detroit.
If the Red Wings choose to wait until they name the next head or heads of hockey operations to get their offseason business done, that process alone could take weeks or even months.
By the time that all of it’s said and done with, we could be talking about training camp taking place at Little Caesars Arena for the first time since the 3rd lockout. Or longer. None of us really know what’s going on.
As far as the disgruntled captain is concerned, Dylan Larkin hasn’t spoken to anybody in the media, either, and outside of a couple of soccer-themed, “Hey guys, I’m here!” Instagram posts, as well as a July 4th pic of himself and Zach Werenski winning gold at the Olympics, he’s been quiet as quiet can be in terms of giving no interviews and fewer clues as to what his next steps might include.
Larkin isn’t going to co-write a book with Pat Brisson titled, How to Engineer Two Star Red Wings Players’ Career Break-Ups Exactly 23 Years Apart, Without Really Trying** once all of this shit is done with, either, regardless of whether he remains a Red Wing, or whether he’s traded (and my money is on the latter option being more likely).
The Toronto Sun’s Steve Simmons asked the, “Why all of this, and why all of this now?” question regarding the general manager’s part of the equation on Sunday…
On April 11, the Detroit Red Wings officially missed the playoffs for the seventh straight season under GM Steve Yzerman. Somehow, it took three months and four days for the same Wings to decide to essentially fire Yzerman as GM. What exactly was ownership using the time doing? In the meantime, the Leafs, Canucks, Blues, Predators, Devils and Kraken all hired new GMs. Now, looking for one, the Wings don’t exactly get the pick of the litter … It would make sense for Detroit to consider ex-Leaf and ex-Wing Brendan Shanahan as GM, except for two issues. One, he’s very close with Yzerman and it’s not certain his hiring would work with their friendship. Two, Shanahan has never really done GM work. He was team president in Toronto, a different animal than daily general manager responsibilities. Still, the Wings will have trouble finding anyone more qualified for the job than Shanahan.
These are all good questions, Mr. Simmons, and the most frustrating part of all of it is that we’re never going to get the answers to the vast majority of these questions.
The organization will make its changes to the front office, when and only when it is ready to make said changes, and once the new person or persons in charge of hockey operations are named, then the Dylan Larkin situation will be rectified.
It’s going to take however long it takes, and not a moment less, be “however long it takes” meaning days, weeks, or even months. Ilitch organizations are not known for moving quickly when matters of gravitas are concerned.
So we’re going to read a lot of clickbait headlines that rehash the few intelligent things that the Red Wings’ beat writers and the Elliotte Friedmans of the world had to say about this past week’s events. If somebody can make a Retweetable Tweet/X post based upon the past couple days’ worth of columns or radio hits, some stupid website is going to insist that NOW AND ONLY NOW they understand the REAL story BEHIND the story, and that you can find out, too, if you only click on ham-fisted-headline dot net…
We’re going to hear the sports talk radio jocks who stir shit up just to stir shit up, well…They’re going to keep stirring shit up for the sake of angry phone callers and quick “bits” that draw social media traction through YouTube and TikTok hits…
And we’re just not going to know.
There will be some good, honest efforts to determine what’s going to happen next based upon past practices. There will be some well-intentioned columns written by the beat writers, there will be some genuinely well-intentioned interviews given on the NHL Tonight and even 97.1 by the legitimate hockey insiders of the world, and, if we’re very, very lucky, Christopher Ilitch or someone high up in the organization will give what we think is a throwaway interview during a Tigers broadcast in August that ends up providing a partial road map as to what the hell is going on as we all lose our patience with this business…
But, for now, at least, we’re riding blind, folks, and as much as an information junkie like me despises having to admit that he does not know what’s going on, and can’t even make an educated guess, because we are in uncharted territory…
We’re in uncharted territory, folks, and the absolute worst thing we can do right now is to jump to unfounded conclusions.
The second worst thing we can do right now is to click on the stupid headlines generated by those clickbait websites or clickbait YouTube channels or TikTok accounts. Because all those folks tend to do is stir shit up in order to get us all stirred up, which does nothing but burn energy that few of us have to burn.
In the interim?
I’ll preach patience, as hard as it is to find on July 20th, 2026. Aside from having something to celebrate Pavel Datsyuk’s 48th birthday (today), I would highly suggest that we do our best to wait and see, and to wait until someone who is more of a source than, “I found this random Tweet and now I’m a website dot com” or, “Dylan Larkin’s second cousin’s hairdresser’s dry cleaner was on The Fan 590 and he said…” give us a real reason to perk up our ears and pay attention.
The timing for all of this, admittedly, is terrible.
We’re supposed to be in the middle of a quieting-down offseason, and, instead, most of us have no f***ing clue what’s going to happen between now and September.
Not to the front office, not to Dylan Larkin, and not to what’s going to happen to the direction in which a team whose fans are already tired of the Yzer-Rebuild may have to swallow in terms of accepting that another delayed rebuild is on its way in.
For now, we wait, we hope for the best, and we await confirmation from real, genuine sources who have real, genuine information (or at least a semblance thereof) for us.
This is a complicated, nuanced period of time for an organization’s front office and an organization’s disgruntled captain, and trying to rush through the respective decision-making processes of finding the next head of the Detroit Red Wings’ hockey operations department, and/or deciding to where and for whom Dylan Larkin is inevitably traded…Rushing those kinds of decisions do not help anyone.
Even in the middle of the summer, with the 2026-2027 season less than three months away, rushing into things is rushing into the worst possible outcome.
So we’ll wait. And ignore the clickbait as best we possibly can, because the vast majority of what’s out there between now and the official press releases from Red Wings PR will be clickbait.
And * and ** are two things we can be sure of:
- The Red Wings are not going to let Simon Edvinsson walk away due to an offer sheet. Detroit has more than enough cap room to accommodate a raise for Edvinsson that is larger than even Dylan Larkin’s salary…
- And the only thing I can tell you is that Pat Brisson did a fine job of ensuring that Sergei Fedorov ended up leaving the Red Wings for Anaheim in 2003 while Fedorov’s dad, Viktor, blathered away to the late Igor Larin of Sport-Express about his poor son being misunderstood, miscast, and not given enough ice time or responsibility befitting Sergei Fedorov. Believe me, that’s another one of those situations where I was working on a hockey bulletin board at the time, and it was an, “I read this bullshit so you don’t have to” situation for Brisson’s last client who went through a messy break-up with the Detroit Red Wings. I don’t want to have to go through that again.
I’m reading an inordinate amount of bullshit right now, and I’m not posting it because it’s not worth your time. That much, I have always promised you–TMR is a lot of things, but it’s not clickbait.
