Dylan Larkin wants out, and the Detroit Red Wings just slapped a price tag on him that should scare off the tire-kickers.
Darren Dreger laid out the ask Thursday. Three or four pieces: two A-quality prospects, a top-nine forward who can play right now, and a first-round pick.
Call it the full menu. Detroit isn't treating this like a salary dump, and the shape of the request makes that obvious to every front office in the league.
Thursday night, the 30-year-old went out and logged 23:15 at home, picking up an assist and two shots in a 2-1 win over Philadelphia.
So the Red Wings are shopping a forward still eating big minutes. He has three points through five games, with one of them coming on the power play.
He also carries an $8,700,000 cap hit, the biggest number on Detroit's roster. Any buyer has to move real money back or carve out space first.
Who blinks first? A trade request hands leverage to buyers, and rival GMs know Detroit can't let this drag through the fall.
Four-game western road trip puts the Red Wings on the clock
Detroit hosts San Jose on Saturday, then heads out for Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. That's a lot of travel with a star who has asked out.
The standings offer no cover. The Red Wings sit 2-3-2 and rank last in their division.
Seattle, the first stop on that swing, already beat them 6-3 in Detroit on Oct. 9. Now the Red Wings get them in their building.
The forward depth is thin right now. J.T. Compher and Marco Kasper are on injured reserve, and Mason Appleton is listed day-to-day.
That's why the top-nine piece matters more than it looks on paper. Pull a top forward out of this lineup without a body coming back, and the bottom six gets exposed fast.
And Detroit is right to insist on it. Moving its highest-paid forward for futures alone would be a bad trade for a team scoring 2.3 goals a night.
Selling Larkin for prospects and a pick would be like selling your only car and planning to walk to work until the new one arrives in three years.
The prospect demand is where contenders will flinch. Two A-quality kids plus a first is the kind of package most teams guard like the deed to the house.
Alex DeBrincat has 7 points over his last five games, so the offense has a pulse. But Lucas Raymond still hasn't scored, and that weight lands on Todd McLellan's top six.
The price is public now. What nobody knows is whether a contender meets it before that western trip turns a trade request into a standoff nobody in Detroit wants.
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Should the Red Wings refuse to move Dylan Larkin unless a contender pays all four pieces?
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