Kristen ShiltonOct 15, 2026, 08:00 AM ETCloseKristen Shilton is a national NHL reporter for ESPN.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsAll the Detroit Red Wings wanted was puck drop on a new season.It was the only way.The only way to — finally — turn the page on a tumultuous offseason of gossipy headlines that deposited Detroit under an unwelcome (and unrelenting) spotlight. There was captain Dylan Larkin’s trade request in June, Steve Yzerman abruptly stepping down as general manager in July, key restricted free agent Simon Edvinsson remaining unsigned and no new front office leader in place until the announcement of interim general manager Shawn Horcoff just two days before training camp opened in late September.The Red Wings — fresh off missing the playoffs for a tenth straight year in 2025-26 — limped their way into another preseason anyway. Larkin, stripped of the team’s captaincy, was there but soon injured. Edvinsson, still without a contract, came to town as well (before going home to Sweden on the heels of his own trade request).
It felt as though the drama was reaching a fever pitch faster than Detroit could get to that first real game, where the team’s play — and not some media machine — could do the talking.Promise. Hope. Belief. The Red Wings had it all just hours away from their first real outing.
The slate would be clean, the energy refreshed.”It’s us against the rest of the world,” defenseman Moritz Seider said. “That’s something we’ve learned pretty fast; with how much noise there is around this team. I think there are plenty of reasons to be anxious or nervous. But it’s like, even if we didn’t know who the [full-time] GM was at the start of camp, like, what changes?
Nothing, really, because he’s not the one who’s setting the standard, who’s setting the tone on the ice, and he’s definitely not going to go out there and help us to win games.”We have everything in place to be a good hockey team, and it just comes down to each and every one of us to be the best version of ourselves. We have really come together as a group and feel we were just more excited than anything.”Seider and his teammates echoed similar allegiances of brotherhood and held tightly to them heading into player introductions before Game 1 of 84 was underway. But the assembled crowd at Little Caesars Arena didn’t bring its rose-colored glasses (a plain-clothed Larkin receiving resounding boos during his pregame recognition? Foreshadowing!) because even before the team’s coming display, the franchise’s faithful was already despondent.Because not getting a deal done with Edvinsson and having Larkin’s situation unresolved weren’t their only grievances with Detroit’s front office.
The Red Wings’ season began with Alex DeBrincat as a key pending unrestricted free agent in July, and the club had whiffed on a mid-September deadline to get DeBrincat locked in on a maximum eight-year extension before the league’s new collective bargaining agreement makes seven years the longest a player can agree on. Management also didn’t retain fan favorite veterans such as Patrick Kane — who walked back to Chicago in free agency — and then to have Larkin lingering and now even available to play, it could suddenly feel like death by a thousand cuts for the franchise.There was some good news coming. Detroit signed DeBrincat to a seven-year, $91 million deal Wednesday to help cushion the blow of its now 1-3-2 record — but even that couldn’t fully quell concerns over the Red Wings’ tenuous prospects for the season.Then Detroit actually began to play. And the knife poked in a little deeper.
The Red Wings were bad — so bad that midway through the 2-0 shutout loss to New York in their home opener, choruses of “sell the team” echoed (on multiple occasions) from inside a building (established in 2017) that still hasn’t hosted an NHL postseason game. And Detroit hadn’t even fallen to Rangers’ star goaltender Igor Shesterkin. Backup Dylan Garand shut the door.Game 2 of the year was another home loss (3-2 to Winnipeg). Detroit was 0-2 to start a season for the first time since 2015-16 (and then, at least, they’d been on the road).
An injury to Marco Kasper (since placed on injured reserve with an upper-body injury) against the Jets loomed large. The Red Wings were fine at 5-on-5 but terrifically awful on special teams.Basically, it was going to be a long year in Detroit. Or so it seemed. But the Red Wings had miles to go before being truly counted out.
Larkin would be back for their third game of the season. The kinship — which had been a rallying cry for players repeatedly in the past — was still intact. All Detroit needed was to ignore the mounting sense of crisis, clean up its early incompetence, win a few games and get on track toward what was supposed to be the year when it turned everything around against all odds.It was now or never all too soon for Detroit to put actions behind words. That remains — like the Red Wings — a work in progress as Detroit languishes already in the Atlantic basement with a 1-3-1 record.
There will be no reprieve then for a group that has been taking it on the chin from detractors for months. The Red Wings have to show that true change is not only still possible but also probable.That has meant being realistic about what they are and aren’t while uncovering an evolving identity. Whatever Detroit intends to become must be forged from less-than-ideal circumstances. The time, as ever, was nigh.”I think we’ve done a pretty good job keeping the noise out of here,” DeBrincat said.
“I think we know what we can do. Maybe we deserve better in these games, a couple more bounces can go our way. But we have to work for it. It’s not just going to come to us.
We’re not skilled enough to expect to go out there and score six goals. We have to be more crisp and bring that mentality a little bit higher. We’ll be good. We’re in the right spots, we’re just not executing on the plays and we’re not putting it in the net.
We have plenty of chances to win these games.”From his lips, to the hockey gods’ ears.DETROIT NEEDED A VICTORY. In more ways than one.During NHL draft weekend in June, it was a shocking development when news leaked that Larkin had asked for a trade from the club that drafted him 15th overall in 2014. The team’s top center, who has amassed 645 points in 811 career games with 30-plus goals in each of his last five seasons, has five years remaining on his eight-year, $69.6 million contract that includes a no-trade clause.Larkin originally said he wanted to land only in Vegas, Florida or Minnesota. However, he reportedly widened the net to include Dallas, Washington, Colorado and Tampa Bay, leaving Yzerman (and now Horcoff) with scant leverage to gain an adequate return on the team’s star player.
And so, Larkin remains a Red Wing — albeit one without a letter — and, as such, one of their best forwards. Having Larkin healthy after he suffered an upper-body injury working out in the gym was best for Detroit’s prospects on the ice.Larkin was cleared to return for Detroit before the Red Wings faced Ottawa. He didn’t miss a beat, scoring a goal in the first period and adding an assist on Viktor Arvidsson’s power-play strike in the second period to help Detroit earn its 5-3 win that delivered a much-needed shot in the arm after its frustrating start.It meant something to have Larkin involved in a positive turn of events for the team. Granted, the cloud hanging over his unfulfilled ask isn’t going to miraculously dissipate.
But until it comes to fruition (or not), the Red Wings don’t want to fracture internally. Larkin acknowledged during the preseason that, “I asked for a trade from the Detroit Red Wings as a captain and that has consequences” and expressed that, through his actions, he wanted to “build trust with my teammates again and with the fans.”That is why he went out with the others during those poorly received player introductions before the season opener.
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