The Detroit Red Wings suspended Dylan Larkin without pay on Thursday, hours after his agent told the club he would not play for them again. He is still their player, and he still decides where he goes next.
Interim general manager Shawn Horcoff put it in a statement: “Dylan Larkin has informed us that he will no longer play for the Detroit Red Wings. We are disappointed by his decision, particularly given his obligations to the organization and his teammates. We have therefore suspended Dylan without pay.”
It is the second time in six weeks that an NHL club has done this to a star. The first was Winnipeg, and that one ended in a trade.
What the suspension costs him
$41,237.11 a day, according to TSN.
That figure comes out of his salary, not his cap hit. The two are different numbers: Larkin’s cap hit is $8.7 million, but his actual 2026-27 base salary is $8 million, and the daily rate is that salary divided across the days of the season. Every game Detroit plays without him costs about $95,000.
Connor Hellebuyck lost just under $40,000 a day on the same mechanism and was traded after giving up well over ten per cent of his salary.
Why Detroit cannot simply trade him
Because Larkin holds a full no-trade clause, and it does not soften until 2028-29.
His contract runs eight years and is worth $69.6 million, signed in 2023 and expiring in 2031. The clause column reads NTC from 2023-24 through 2027-28, then modified with a 10-team list for the final three seasons. In plain terms: for this season and next, nobody moves him anywhere without his signature.
That is the sentence hiding inside Horcoff’s statement. “We will continue to explore trade opportunities involving Dylan,” he said. “In addition to needing his approval, any trade must also be in the best interest of the Detroit Red Wings.”
Larkin’s side gave Detroit a three-team list in the summer and later opened it to ten: Florida, Minnesota, Vegas, Dallas, Washington, Carolina, Utah, Tampa Bay, New Jersey and Colorado.
Who is actually in it
TSN’s Pierre LeBrun has Minnesota “pushing hard”, Washington as no fit, and Florida out of it entirely — the Wild have been the favorite for a while.
Darren Dreger’s point is the harder one. The teams that want Larkin and the teams he will go to are two different lists, and the first is longer: he named Montreal, Boston, Nashville, Buffalo and St. Louis as clubs interested without being on it. Detroit, he said, “doesn’t appear interested in a futures-driven return and can’t make a bad trade.”
So the standoff is straightforward. Larkin can refuse every destination but ten. Detroit can refuse every offer it considers light. Each day that nobody blinks costs him $41,237.11 and costs Detroit a top-six center it is still paying nothing for.
His agent Pat Brisson’s version, in a statement shared by LeBrun: “Dylan’s had enough of the situation. We believe he’s been very professional and cooperative through this process.”
Larkin has six points in ten games this season, 649 in 818 as a Red Wing, and one playoff series to show for eleven years in Detroit. He was stripped of the captaincy on 11 September, which his teammates were asked about long before this week.
Detroit plays on without him — here is how to watch them.
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