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No Need To Hurry To Give Larkin The C |
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One of the most frequently-posed questions when the Detroit Red Wings cleaned out their lockers earlier this week dealt with the timetable for making Dylan Larkin the next captain of the team.
Here’s another question - what’s the rush?
It’s been almost a foregone conclusion that Larkin’s No. 71 Red Wings jersey will eventually be adorned with a captain’s C. The role became available when Henrik Zetterberg’s chronic back issues forced him to give up the game on the eve of training camp last fall.
Wings coach Jeff Blashill didn’t make a rash decision to name a new captain and now that the season is done, he’s still in no hurry to make up his mind.
“I’ve had no conversation about that yet with (GM) Ken Holland, coaches and management,” Blashill said. “I would leave that for next fall. Can you have no captain? Lots of teams have had success without one, per se.
“When the situation is right you name a captain, if you don’t think the situation is right, you stay with assistants. I think leadership is an extraordinarily important thing. I think it comes from more than one person and I think it come regardless if you wear a letter.”
It was a wise choice not to give out the C in a panic move last fall, and to give it to Larkin at that juncture, when he was already going to be asked to fill Zetterberg’s demanding on-ice role, could have crushed the kid under the pressure and expectations.
Instead, veterans like Niklas Kronwall and Justin Abdelkader stepped up to fill in many of the leadership roles and Larkin was able to further develop his leadership skills at his own pace.
People remember Steve Yzerman as a legendary captain but that narrative conveniently forgets his early struggles in the role, when at the age of 21 in 1986, Yzerman was handed the C on a bad Red Wings team with limited veteran support in the leadership role.
“Stevie Y, he really had his challenges as captain,” former Wings assistant coach Doug MacLean told Sportsnet. “I was with him five years in Detroit and he really had his challenges.
“Number one, he was a young guy. He was a young captain. He got the captaincy when he was in his early 20s. He was an unbelievable player for us in Detroit but he really struggled in that role.
“As time moved on, as new players and veteran players were added, Stevie Y went from being an okay captain in my opinion, at best - to a great captain. It was age and it was experience.”
Larkin is 22. Another year without a C on his sweater isn’t going to make any difference in how he plays the game, or how he approaches his role off the ice.
“I guess you don’t know if you’re ready until something happens but I’m not worried about it,” Larkin said. “I’m just worried about coming back and trying to turn this around. We all are.
“We’ve had time where we didn’t have a captain but there’s leadership in this room. We talked about that a lot. Kronner does it right every day and plays hard and still is a great player. And Abby plays hard, and Fransie (Frans Nielsen).
“There’s a bunch of guys that could definitely be wearing the captain’s C. I try not to focus on that. I try to focus on playing hard every game and now we need to focus on winning.”
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