Erik Johnson played twenty seasons in the NHL and won a Stanley Cup in Colorado. He was also in that dressing room when a teammate asked out, and he thinks the Avalanche handled it rather better than this.
“When Matt Duchene asked for a trade from Colorado in 2016, he got it,” Johnson said on ESPN’s broadcast. “But the core guys of the team, Gabe Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, we went to Joe Sakic and said, get him out of here. We want to be part of the Avs and be part of the solution. We ended up being rewarded for that.”
Then he turned to Dylan Larkin.
“I can’t stand these guys halfway through their contracts that they’ve signed in good faith with their teams and then bailing ship and wanting to go for greener pastures,” Johnson said. “This isn’t exclusive to Dylan Larkin, lots of guys around the league are doing it. I don’t like it.”
Where the standoff stands:
| Suspended since | Daily cost to Larkin | Teams on his list | Contract runs to |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 29 | $41,000 | 10 | 2030-31 |
What do the Red Wings want for Dylan Larkin?
Minnesota are the club most frequently attached to him, and Elliotte Friedman has floated a package built around prospect Danila Yurov and three first-round picks as the sort of thing being discussed. That is Friedman’s reading rather than a confirmed offer, and interim general manager Shawn Horcoff has made clear he is willing to wait for a return he considers fair.
Detroit have an obvious problem in getting there. Larkin holds full trade protection through 2027-28, which means he decides where he goes, and his list of ten clubs has not produced anything the Red Wings want. They asked his camp to expand it further. Agent Pat Brisson refused, saying ten was already more than the three they started with.
Friedman has since reported that Detroit had expected the list to grow and were caught out when it didn’t.
Johnson did acknowledge there may be more to the situation than the public can see, saying he had spoken to Larkin’s agent about things going on that the media doesn’t know about. It didn’t move him much.
“As a former player, I don’t like these guys abandoning their teams midseason, mid-contract,” he said.
Larkin has been suspended without pay since October 29 and is forfeiting more than $41,000 a day. He is a Michigan native, was stripped of the captaincy in September, and is signed through 2030-31 at an $8.7 million cap hit.
Colorado, for what it is worth, traded Duchene in November 2017 and won the Cup five years later with Landeskog as captain and MacKinnon as the best player on the ice.
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