The Minnesota Wild have had many ways to improve their roster this offseason, but they’ve only had eyes for Dylan Larkin. The Detroit Red Wings captain’s trade request became public on June 4 and since then Wild fans have spent their summer refreshing their feeds to see if any new developments have come across their timeline.
Instead, they keep getting updates similar to the one from MLive’s Ansar Khan. According to the Red Wings beat reporter, the Wild are Larkin’s “preferred destination,” but the Wild don’t have the assets to make a deal. Detroit also isn’t interested in futures and the Wild have included Danila Yurov and Charlie Stramel as part of a package.
With those details in place, Khan’s report completes the Wild offseason bingo when it comes to their pursuit of Larkin. After bypassing several opportunities to bring players in to keep the door open for Larkin, Minnesota’s best path may be to move on and wait for the next opportunity to fall out of the sky.
Wild’s Dylan Larkin dreams are turning into an impossible reality
The Wild’s interest in Larkin is obvious and he’s worth the attention. Minnesota has seemingly had a hole at top-line center since Bob Naegele Jr. founded the Wild in 1997 and while Mikko Koivu’s No. 9 jersey hangs in the rafters, they haven’t had a player like Larkin, who is a six-time 30-goal scorer and netted a career-high 34 goals for the Red Wings last season.
Larkin’s two-way game is also something that interests the Wild and with his Team USA connections from the 4 Nations Face-Off and 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics, there is immediate chemistry with Quinn Hughes, Matt Boldy and Brock Faber.
While some teams don’t see Larkin as a true No. 1, the Wild have enough to elevate his game to that level. But that also means they have to acquire Larkin in a trade.
It seemed simple enough when Larkin made his request but there were plenty of hurdles that were overlooked. The first being that Larkin has five years remaining on his contract which at $8.7 million per season is an absolute bargain the way NHL salaries are spiking in the wake of Kiril Kaprizov’s albatross extension with a $17 million AAV.
The other hurdle was dealing with Steve Yzerman, whose seat was warmer than a grill on the Fourth of July. The Red Wings haven’t been to the playoffs since the 2015-16 season and if Yzerman didn’t get a significant return for their captain, he was probably going to get fired. With that, Matt Boldy was rumored as part of Detroit’s asking price for Larkin and Yzerman got “reassigned” shortly after with the Red Wings now looking for a general manager.
In all, the Red Wings are the biggest self-inflicted mess in Detroit since Cheddar Bob shot himself in the leg. Waiting on them to clean up their act, find a new GM and accept two players that most NHL observers don’t know are top-six centers for Larkin seems like a fantasy and it may be in the Wild’s interest to roll into the season with what they have.
The Wild are good enough to compete without Dylan Larkin
What the Wild have doesn’t sound all that appealing. Ryan Hartman is the favorite to start on the top line along with Kirill Kaprizov and a winger of John Hynes’s approval and while Joel Eriksson Ek is on the second line, it’s usually only a matter of time until he’s sidelined by an injury.
Yurov also is expected to fill the third role after looking like a deer in headlights after Eriksson Ek’s absence in the playoffs and the Wild are praying to the hockey gods that Michael McCarron doesn’t regress after handing him a six-year, $20 million contract ahead of free agency.
The Larkin situation especially stings since the Wild could have found an alternative such as Vincent Trocheck, who was traded to the Utah Mammoth while Guerin was waiting for an answer from the Red Wings. But it’s also true that this group also got Minnesota not only got the Wild to the playoffs, but made them a contending team.
It’s probably why Wild GM Bill Guerin preached patience over the Wild’s offseason, presumably waiting for the Red Wings to stop throwing up on their own shoes long enough to make a deal. It’s also why Guerin hinted that the Wild’s next move may not be a center in case a wing shows up and cuts into the 150 points from last year’s lineup that departed this offseason.
Perhaps the new Red Wings GM will have an epiphany if the ghost of hockey’s future shows up on a random night. But betting on Detroit budging and suddenly accepting the Wild’s offer seems like a massive waste of time.
Instead, the Wild should practice what they’re preaching and leave the same updates on the Larkin situation in the dust.
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