Elliotte Friedman's comment on Dylan Larkin tells Canadian hockey fans what they were waiting to hear
Photo credit: Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images
Dylan Larkin requested a trade out of Detroit, and half the hockey internet immediately started building packages to land him in Toronto and other Canadian cities.
Elliotte Friedman just threw cold water on the whole exercise.
Speaking on Saturday, Friedman was blunt about the Detroit Red Wings captain's future. His quote cut straight through the speculation.
"I don't know that [Dylan Larkin] is gonna come to Canada."
- Elliotte Friedman
- Elliotte Friedman
Larkin finished this season with 34 goals and 67 points in 74 games for a Red Wings team that went 41-31-10 and missed the playoffs again.
He carries an $8.7 million cap hit through 2030-31 and holds a full no-trade clause until the end of 2027-28.
That last detail is the one that matters most. Larkin does not just get to request a trade. He gets to pick exactly where he lands.
Minnesota keeps surfacing for a reason
On the 32 Thoughts podcast Friday, Friedman went further. He called the situation one that "has the Wild written all over it" and named Dallas and Tampa Bay as other possibilities.
Every destination he mentioned was an American team with an established core already in place.
That profile tells you something specific. Larkin reportedly wants to join a team that is ready to compete now, not one trying to figure out what it is.
The Toronto Maple Leafs fired Craig Berube in May and still have no head coach. John Chayka is months into a GM role overseeing a roster reset.
Toronto has cap space, but cap space alone does not make a destination attractive to a player with total control over where he goes.
The Leafs need a different plan at centre
Leafs fans spent the past 72 hours debating whether Matthew Knies should be part of a Larkin package.
That conversation assumed Toronto was in the race. Friedman's comments suggest they never were.
The organizational instability and lack of a coaching hire make the Leafs the opposite of what Larkin is looking for.
Toronto still badly needs a second-line centre behind Auston Matthews. That search now has to look somewhere else entirely.
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