Neither Larkin nor his agent, Pat Brisson, have spoken publicly about the situation since Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet first reported the trade request.<\/p>\n
Larkin grew up in the Detroit area and has played his entire hockey career in the state of Michigan. The Red Wings selected him in the first round (No. 15) of the 2014 NHL Draft, and he has 643 points (276 goals, 367 assists) in 808 games for them, 10th\u00a0in their 100-year history. He has been their captain since Jan. 13, 2021, wearing the \u201cC\u201d that Yzerman once wore for Detroit as a player.<\/p>\n
But he has played only five games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, all in his rookie season of 2015-16. The Red Wings have missed the playoffs for 10 straight seasons, their longest drought ever and the longest active drought in the NHL. Larkin got a taste of winning when he helped Team USA win gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan in February, and he turns 30 on July 30.<\/p>\n
There seemed to be tension between Larkin and Yzerman after the 2024-25 season.\u00a0In his season-ending media availability, Larkin said the Red Wings didn\u2019t gain momentum from the NHL Trade Deadline. Their most significant move was acquiring goalie Petr Mrazek and center Craig Smith from the Chicago Blackhawks for center Joe Veleno on March 7, 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuys were kind of down about it,\u201d Larkin said. \u201cIt\u2019d be nice to add something and bring a little bit of spark on the ice, and maybe a morale boost as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yzerman responded by saying the Montreal Canadiens and St. Louis Blues didn\u2019t do anything at the deadline and made the playoffs \u201cled by their best players.\u201d Asked about Larkin\u2019s comments, he said: \u201cI\u2019m counting on our best players, our leaders, to give us a bit of a morale boost. That\u2019s what they\u2019re paid for, and that\u2019s the expectation from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Entering this season, Yzerman said he and Larkin were fine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoy talking with him,\u201d Yzerman told TNT on Oct. 15. \u201cHe\u2019s very open with me. We communicate very well. So, I think we have a great relationship. The comments at the end of the season aren\u2019t that big of a deal and certainly didn\u2019t create any divide in the relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neither Larkin nor his agent, Pat Brisson, have spoken publicly about the situation since Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-730325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}