Dylan Larkin finally sat down with reporters to address his trade request for the first time since it went public over three months ago. Eleven years in this organization, a captaincy stripped, a full summer of speculation and I expected at least a handful of real answers out of the guy.
He even said it himself.
"The fans deserve answers," Larkin told reporters.
Then he spent the rest of the presser providing everything except that.
The Larkin trade request still has no real reason behind it
Larkin requested a trade from the team he's captained since 2021. That's a heavy ask on its own, asking the organization to abandon the guys in that room and asking a fan base that's stuck with this team through ten years without a playoff appearance to absorb it, too.
When asked why, his answer was "there's a lot there," personal stuff, and he's "not ready to go there yet." He added he might never be ready. He was asked if it was due to Team USA and winning gold at the Olympics, but he said that was "a coincidence."
He's still asking everyone else to absorb the fallout of a decision he won't explain.
When asked flat out whether the request still stands, Larkin punted straight to Horcoff, calling it private between the two of them. Reporters pressed him on it directly, and he still wouldn't confirm whether the trade request is still active. This was fine (but not really) in June.
It's mid-September now. Camp is underway. The people buying tickets for opening night still don't know if one of the best players on the ice actually wants to be there. It feels a lot like stringing along a fan base that already gave him and the team a decade of patience.
The captaincy is the one thing he actually answered
Credit where it's due: Larkin confirmed the C came off after a discussion with Shawn Horcoff and the organization, and he said outright that asking for a trade as captain has consequences. That's one of the only real, direct answers we got in the entire session.
But wasn't that always going to be the case? You can't keep a leader that wanted out. Expecting guys to follow someone who might still walk out the door, making their team worse, makes no sense. Especially when you have his replacement sitting on the bench next to him.
The injury timing doesn't sit right
Then there's the injury. Shaw Horcoff announced the upper-body injury in his introductory press call, and Larkin confirmed he got hurt in the gym, with no real timetable given. And isn't the timing a little suspect? A guy who spent all summer trying to force his way out of town shows up to camp banged up right as the actual hockey questions were about to start, right as he'd have to prove on the ice that he's bought back in. Before he has to face the boos that will rain down on opening night. It could be a coincidence, but it absolutely raises eyebrows.
So what did he actually say?
Almost nothing. He talked to his teammates and insisted the trade request wasn't about them. He denied the reported three-team and five-team trade lists without saying what the real list looked like, if one exists. He praised Steve Yzerman and said he just wants to be "one of the guys" now, low on the totem pole, no expectations. None of that answers the two questions that actually matter. Why did you ask to leave, and do you still intend to go?
It was all unnecessary
You don't get to ask an entire organization and fan base to absorb a trade request, strip your own captaincy, and then show up to the trainign camp press conference with "I'm not ready to go there." If that's all you've got then don't do the presser.
Eleven years should buy you the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things. It shouldn't buy you a pass on explaining why you tried to walk out on the people who backed you the whole way. The Larkin trade request deserved a real answer.
The fans (and the NHL world at large) didn't get one.
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