The Dylan Larkin trade watch now runs through a third team. Larkin has told the Detroit Red Wings he will not play for them again until he is moved, and Detroit suspended him without pay on Thursday, interim general manager Shawn Horcoff said in a statement. It is the clearest sign yet of a relationship that is over.Minnesota is the destination that keeps coming up, and Larkin has expanded his approved trade list to 10 teams to help Detroit find a deal. The problem is money. The Wild cannot fit his contract on their own, and Anthony Di Marco of Daily Faceoff reported Friday that the Philadelphia Flyers are willing to step into the middle of it.“That brings us to the Philadelphia Flyers, who have been connected to both the Wild and Larkin, respectively, in past weeks,” Di Marco wrote. “Speaking with team sources, DFO was told that the Flyers would be willing to act as a third-party broker to help facilitate a trade between the Wild and Red Wings.”Why the Flyers Would Join a Dylan Larkin TradeA third team gets pulled into a deal when the two clubs talking cannot make the salary work by themselves. That is Philadelphia’s role here. The Flyers are not trying to land Larkin. They would take on a contract Minnesota needs to shed, and get paid in assets for doing it. Di Marco laid out the mechanics:“Salary will be an issue for the Wild if they were to acquire Larkin, and winger Yakov Trenin’s name has been out there since last spring as a potential cap dump. Trenin, 29, has this year and next remaining on his contract, which carries a $3.5-million AAV and includes a 10-team no-trade clause.According to Flyers sources, they would be willing to absorb Trenin’s contract for the right price. Stramel is a player that the Flyers have a level of interest in and would potentially be the cost of doing business for them to take on the remaining term on Trenin’s contract. The Red Wings have the cap space to eat Trenin’s salary if they wanted to, as a Central Division executive pointed out to DFO, but the Flyers are willing to play a part in a deal if there’s a necessity for it.”The Wild Do Not Have the Cap RoomPuckPedia has Minnesota projected over the salary cap for this season with very little current space to work with. Philadelphia sits at the other end of the league, carrying roughly $10 million in projected space. Clearing Trenin’s $3.5 million is exactly the kind of gap a team with room can close for a price.That is why the Flyers keep surfacing in a conversation that otherwise has nothing to do with them. They are not the finish line for Larkin. They are the room Minnesota does not have.Detroit Still Wants More Than Yurov and StramelClearing the cap is only half the job, and it is not the half that has stalled this. Di Marco reported that an assistant general manager told Daily Faceoff that Danila Yurov and prospect center Charlie Stramel are not going to be enough on their own to get Larkin out of Detroit. Yurov is the 22-year-ol
Content Source: Yahoo News
Image Credit: Getty Images
All rights to the news content and images belong to their respective copyright owners.