Author: George Malik

I know someone on Twitter/X whose handle is, “Dylan Larkin is a #1C,” and we ought to start an, “Andrew Copp is a #1C” account given that it’s true for the Detroit Red Wings without Dylan Larkin’s services.

Anyway, the Wings posted a Tweet commemorating Copp’s 32nd birthday this morning:

🥳🎂 pic.twitter.com/iyYI0NEClR

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) July 8, 2026

To his credit, Copp posted a Red Wings-tenure-high 43 points in 79 games this past season, and he was more consistent than he’s ever been as the team’s de-facto #1B center as Dylan Larkin struggled down the stretch. Here’s hoping that he can exceed his 2025-2026 season performance this upcoming campaign.

DobberHockey’s Alexander MacLean estimates which players fantasy hockey poolies should pick for their “dynasty” fantasy hockey leagues this upcoming season, and MacLean suggests that Red Wings 2026 draft pick JP Hurlbert might make his NHL debut by the end of the 2026-2027 season:

Pick 18 – J.P. Hurlbert (RW) – DET

Another high-upside winger available in this range, Hurlbert thrived in the WHL where he could showcase his offence, and is off to Michigan in the NCAA this coming season who is loading up for another championship run. It’s possible that if he thrives there too, that he could be one and done at the NCAA level and see a few NHL games at the end of the season for a Wings team that likely won’t be playoff bound.

Continued; I’m not certain whether Hurlbert will end up in the NHL by the end of the season, obviously, given Detroit’s preference for “seasoning” their prospects in the AHL before they graduate from the Grand Rapids Griffins to the NHL.

After scoring 42 goals and accumulating 97 points over the course of 68 games with the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers this past season, it’s entirely possible that Hurlbert can continue to buck the developmental curve…

But Detroit’s just not the kind of team to give young players late-season “cups of coffee” with the big team just to give them some NHL experience.

The Athletic’s Sean McIndoe argues that 8 of the NHL’s 32 fan bases should feel “insulted” by their respective teams’ offseason performances as of July 8th…

But McIndoe suggests that it’s not the franchise that the Red Wings’ fan base should be insulted by:

2. Detroit Red Wings

What happened: With a team-record playoff drought hitting the ten-year mark, captain Dylan Larkin stood up and declared that enough was enough. As in: He’d had enough, and wanted to be traded to a good team that was already winning without him. You guys can figure out the whole “winning in Detroit” thing once he’s gone.

The case for: While Larkin certainly wasn’t the only or the biggest star to demand a trade this summer, he was the only one to do so with five years left on his contract. And as has become the norm, he used his no-trade clause to limit his potential destinations to just three teams: Minnesota, Florida or Vegas, none of whom necessarily seemed to have the assets Steve Yzerman would need to make a deal.

So far, Yzerman has been holding strong, waiting for Larkin to either change his mind or provide a longer list. Neither has happened yet, raising the possibility that we might get an extremely awkward September reunion when training camp opens.

The case against: With no trade in place yet, there’s always the possibility that Larkin and Yzerman could work out their differences, similar to what we saw with Werenski in Columbus. And while Yzerman has been pushed into trades before by players like Martin St. Louis and Jonathan Drouin, his track record in those deals is solid, so he might be able to find a way to make this work for the Wings.

The insult-o-meter reads: 8.5/10. Having a captain throw in the towel is a brutal look for a fan base, and barring an unexpected reconciliation, it’s hard to see this ending in anything other than more salt being poured in Wings fans’ wounds.

Continued (paywall); Larkin and Yzerman are NOT going to make up and be friends again, and it IS HIGHLY LIKELY that the Red Wings will not end up with the best player or players after trading Dylan Larkin to another team.

What is also true is that it’s going to be up to Detroit’s players, coaches and management to ensure that the team doesn’t take a step back during the 2025-2026 season.

The Athletic’s Max Bultman discusses the contractual “dominoes” which the Detroit Red Wings face over the course of July, August and early September, a.k.a. Detroit’s offseason, in the form of Patrick Kane’s status, Alex DeBrincat’s potential contract extension, and the same for Simon Edvinsson:

Alex DeBrincat

While [Patrick] Kane and DeBrincat’s friendship makes it tempting to link these two situations, Kane’s age (37) means DeBrincat’s decision about his future needs to be made independently.

One year from becoming an unrestricted free agent, and thus eligible for an extension, DeBrincat is in line for a huge raise on his next deal — and maybe more than we even realized a month or two ago. At the time, the main parameter-setting contract was Adrian Kempe ($10.625 million for eight years), and Alex Tuch’s eight-year deal at $10.5 million reinforced that for a late-20s scorer.

DeBrincat has outproduced both of them, though, and after seeing what kind of money NHL teams were willing to throw around for Jason Robertson and now Leo Carlsson — although Carlsson is much younger and a center, so certainly not a perfect comparable — it’s fair to wonder what could be out there a year from now for DeBrincat, a three-time 40-goal scorer who was 11th in NHL goals and 19th in points last season.

In other words, the Red Wings need to come correct with their offers to DeBrincat, even if that number is over (and possibly well over) $11 million. It’s a lot of money, but it’s the new way of the world in the NHL. And if they don’t pay it, the odds are good that someone else will a year from now.

…

The Red Wings don’t technically have to sign DeBrincat to an extension this summer, with a year left on his current contract. But getting a deal done sooner would prevent this one from looming all year. And with the cap set to rise again in a year, it may save Detroit some money, too. Letting a player get too close to the open market is always a risk.

Bultman continues at length (paywall), and Bleacher Report’s Lyle Richardson weighed in on the prospect of DeBrincat asking for a trade this upcoming season, should Detroit not reach a contractual solution with #93:

MLive’s Ansar Khan weighs in regarding the scuttlebutt surrounding Elliotte Friedman’s suggestion that the Carolina Hurricanes have considered submitting a restricted free agent offer sheet to Red Wings defenseman Simon Edvinsson:

If they do, or any other team does, it will be an exercise in futility, accomplishing nothing but inflating the Red Wings’ payroll and possibly prompting general manager Steve Yzerman to tender a retaliatory offer sheet to one of that club’s future restricted free agents.

That’s because the Red Wings are sure to match any offer to Edvinsson, even if it exceeds $10 million a season. With more than $18 million in cap space, a number in flux given the uncertainty of what they’ll get back in the inevitable Dylan Larkin trade, they can easily afford to match any offer.

The compensation for an offer sheet with an AAV of between $9,551,333 and $11,939,166 is two first-round picks, one second-round pick and one third-round pick. Anything more than that would garner four first-round picks if the club declined to match.

Khan continues, estimating Edvinsson’s contractual worth as a restricted free agent:

As noted last week, new Red Wings forward Wilmer Skoog spoke with Hockeysverige.se’s Ronnie Ronnqvist on Friday, discussing his decision to sign with Detroit and his expectations for his upcoming tenure with the team.

This morning, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff offers more highlights from Skoog’s Swedish-language interview:

In his third pro season with the Florida Panthers organization in 2025-26, Skoog, 26, finally made his NHL debut. He played three late-season games for the Panthers. In the season finale, an 8-1 drubbing of the Red Wings, Skoog collected two assists. Those were his first NHL points. He thought he’d done enough to earn a new contract with the Panthers. Skoog thought wrong. No qualifying offer was forthcoming from Florida.

“It wasn’t disappointing, but I was a little surprised,” Skoog said. “I then mostly saw opportunities to talk to other teams and see where there was interest.”

He knows that the Red Wings haven’t made the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2016. Skoog embraces the opportunity to be a piece of the puzzle that finally puts it together and gets Detroit back into the NHL postseason.

“These are new challenges, and I hope to be a part of and contribute to hopefully making it to the playoffs,” Skoog said. “It’s a process all the time, even for all the players. I think it’s more about where I see opportunities for myself. A little bit of what they say and what I myself think and believe. I think it feels like a good ‘fit’.”

Duff also noted Skoog’s remarks regarding joining a team with a history of utilizing Swedish players:

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan took part in a midsummer edition of the News’s “Octopulse” podcast, discussing the hypothetical question as to whether Dylan Larkin will win a Stanley Cup with whatever team to which he’s traded before the Detroit Red Wings win a Stanley Cup:

“He’ll (Larkin) help someone the next couple of seasons for sure (win a Stanley Cup), especially if he’s more of a No. 2 center and not a No. 1,” Kulfan said on the podcast. “That’s why the Wings need to get as big of a return as they can. They’ve been telling people they want ready-made players.

“If you’re a team though that’s going to get a Dylan Larkin, chances are you’re not going to give away a really good player to get him. You’re more than willing to trade draft picks and prospects.”

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:

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan discusses Patrick Kane’s situation today, suggesting that Kane could end up in Buffalo, Toronto or even Chicago. Kulfan also offers some reasons why Kane might want to leave Detroit, and they’ve got my “spidey sense” tingling:

▶ Captain Dylan Larkin’s trade demand and the likelihood Larkin has played his last game as a Wing. Without Larkin, a consistent 30-goal scorer and one of the top two-way centers in the NHL, the Wings’ path to ending a streak of 10 consecutive years without making the playoffs looks grim.

For Kane, that would mean no chance of getting another playoff run, and another opportunity to win a Stanley Cup.

Kane and Larkin also had a relationship going back to playing together on Team USA at the world championships. Not having Larkin around might be a reason for Kane to leave, also.

As I’ve told you repeatedly, Kane and Larkin share the same agent in the long-tenured power broker known as Pat Brisson, and I do believe that the Larkin situation might be holding up Kane’s decision-making process.

However, my “gut feeling” is that Kane may be holding up his decision until the Larkin situation is resolved, waiting to see whether the Red Wings are able to acquire present-day value in exchange for their disgruntled captain.

Kulfan also believes that Kane’s future may be tied to his pal, Alex DeBrincat:

The Free Press’s Helene St. James reports that disgruntled Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin still wants to be traded to the Vegas Golden Knights, Florida Panthers or Minnesota Wild:

In two-plus months since requesting trade from Red Wings, Dylan Larkin has not expanded his list (he has no-trade clause) from Florida, Minnesota, Vegas. No offers from those teams have intrigued Wings. They want value-now players for a 1C with very favorable contract.

— Helene St. James (@HeleneStJames) July 7, 2026

The Red Wings must hold out for the best possible deal they can acquire for Larkin, but if this drags into September–which it very well might–I don’t see him showing up for training camp.