The pain of missing out yet again lingers, but there’s no sign Dylan Larkin is growing impatient with the Detroit Red Wings 10 years after he and they last made the playoffs.
Larkin was among 10 players who met with reporters on Friday, April 17, two days after the Wings closed out the 2025-26 season. There’s been no word from the organization on when general manager Steve Yzerman will make himself available.
But the players did, Larkin the last to go. He opened up about the frustration of again being done after 82 games, about the injury that hampered him the last five weeks of the season, and what needs to happen for the Wings to have a better chance next season of ending what’s become the longest active playoff drought in the NHL.
Tough time emotionally
Larkin sat out the 8-1 loss that tarnished the Wings’ season-ending performance on Wednesday at the Florida Panthers. The Wings played twice after being eliminated when they lost at home to the New Jersey Devils on April 11, and days later, that feeling lingered.
“It’s been hard,” he said. “I think it’s been very difficult end to the season. Never a fun time when you miss the playoffs, but especially in this fashion and kind of being here again. So today is not a pleasant day around the rink, for sure.”
Ten long years
Larkin joined the Wings in 2015 and got his first – and so far only – taste of the NHL playoffs in the spring of 2016. He arrived at a time the team was starting out in the rebuild, so for them to miss for several years was expected. He signed an eight-year, $69.6 million contract extension on March 1, 2023, but he’s now closing in on age 30 (he hits that milestone July 30) and is entering the last few years of being in the prime of his career.
Larkin didn’t sound like he could picture himself finishing his career elsewhere.
“For a lot of those years, yes, you go into the season and you want to make the playoffs, but realistically was that going to happen?” he said. “There were some years where it wasn’t really what we were trying to do. I understood what was going on with rebuilding and getting draft picks.
“I’m just thinking going back to when I signed an eight-year deal and I knew that we had work to do and I knew that we weren’t going to win the Stanley Cup the next day, but I wanted to be here and I want to be here to help this team in any way I can to win the Stanley Cup.”
Expectations started to change when Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond came in and made an impact, and the past few years, the Wings began to look like a team emerging from the rebuild and poised to take the next natural step and make the playoffs. That still hasn’t happened, but Larkin emphasized he wants to be part of the group that changes that.
“We need to get the Detroit Red Wings back in the playoffs, not just me,” he said.
The injury was painful in every way
On March 4, Larkin was hit during a game against the Vegas Golden Knights, his head snapping back painfully, though he was able to return. On March 6, his right leg buckled when he pulled up to take a shot – and that sidelined him for seven games.
“I got a hit against Vegas and I think that had a bigger deal with kind of the play and I wasn’t able to move as well,” Larkin said. “I got put in a really awkward spot and I went down and it was unfortunate but kind of lucky, I guess, that it wasn’t more serious and that I was able to come back. But I was in pain for a while and kind of had to get the right preparation and doing things for the body to get it feeling better. It did start feeling a little bit better but yeah, it was affecting me.”
As if the physical pain wasn’t enough, it happened just as the Wings had acquired Justin Faulk and David Perron at the trade deadline to bolster their hopes of earning a playoff berth.
“That was where you start to feel like it’s just, it’s unbelievable, – like why now,” he said. “I know part of sports is injuries but it was just unfortunate timing.”
What happened down the stretch
The Wings were 12 points inside the playoff picture on Jan. 24, but that deflated through March and became a deficit down the stretch.
“I feel like when it got tight, we also got tight,” Larkin said. “This is the best team I’ve been on record-wise and it’s stressful because we’re pushing for more and we pushed and pushed. Guys do the right things here, guys work hard, guys are out there 30 minutes before practice. We do the right things and I just think when it got tight, which it does, we just got tight as a group and allowed teams to get back into it.
“It’s very disappointing to be sitting here today. I did believe we were going to make the playoffs.”
Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dylan Larkin down but determined: ‘Need to get Red Wings back in playoffs’
Reporting by Helene St. James, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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