Dylan Larkin grimaced as he sat down at the microphone after the Red Wings' 6-1 loss to the Panthers on Sunday, a day after a 4-0 loss to the Rangers, toward the end of another season in which his team will miss the playoffs. He rubbed his eyes and then stared into the distance, his gaze weary, his beard scraggly, looking and sounding like a player twice his age.
In his headshot from the beginning of the season, Larkin is smiling. His eyes are full of hope. This was not the player who stared into the cameras on Sunday, shaking his head as he tried to summon answers for another lopsided defeat. Larkin is 25, one of the youngest captains in the NHL, but he wears the pain of six straight losing seasons on his face.
Sunday marked the Red Wings' 10th loss this season by at least four goals. It marked their 36th time allowing at least four, all 36 of which has resulted in losses. They have effectively thrown nearly half of their games into the fire. Almost none of this falls on Larkin, an All-Star in the midst of a bounce-back season -- though he is minus-11 over the last five games. It falls mostly on the overmatched players around him, on a roster that still isn't skilled enough or deep enough to win five years into a rebuild.
And now the Wings are in another gauntlet of games against the NHL's best, each one a reminder that they have so much further to go. Last week brought the Hurricanes, Rangers and Panthers, the lone highlight a 46-save shutout by Alex Nedeljkovic against Carolina. This week brings the Lightning, Panthers and Penguins. And the three games after that will bring the season to a merciful end.
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"It’s a challenge and we have to be up for it or else it’s going to be like tonight and against New York where we don’t create much and we don’t have any fun playing with the puck," Larkin said. "We have to challenge ourselves. I’ve said it a lot: someone can’t push you out the door like it’s minor hockey and give you candy after the game.
"You have to take pride in this. You have to take pride in wearing the winged wheel and going out there and fighting for a job next year. There’s plenty of guys in our locker room that have to do that, I would say everyone, and you have to find that yourself. It doesn’t just come. You have to find it. We play great teams here, let’s go out and give it our best -- and we just haven’t had enough of that. You see it at times, but we need to see it every night."
When Larkin arrived in Detroit in the fall of 2015, a 19-year-old fresh out of Michigan, he would help the Wings to their 25th straight playoff berth. They haven't been back since. These are the modern-day Dead Wings, having missed the playoffs six years in a row for the first time since a seven-year drought in the 1970's, and just the second time in franchise history. This is what has become of the team that did nothing but win when Larkin was growing up. This is what Larkin wears on his heart, which he often wears on his sleeve.
"Yeah, I take it personally," Larkin said. "This is...," and now he paused, again shaking his head, perhaps unsure if he should speak the words on his mind.
"It’s brutal," he said, not holding back. "To be here, I’ve been all six years and it’s no fun packing your bag at the end of the year and going to play in the World Championships or do whatever. It just isn’t. You want to play playoff hockey. We got a lot of guys in here that haven’t been through this, but you gotta remember it. You gotta take it in and put it on yourself to come back and have a great year next year and make sure this doesn’t happen again. It can’t happen much longer."
Question is, when will it end? The Wings have added some much-needed talent this season, and there's more on the way, but they remain well behind the pack of playoff teams in the East. The top four teams in their division -- Florida, Toronto, Tampa Bay and Boston -- have been playoff mainstays for the last three seasons. None of them seem close to fading. The team that might be closest to slipping in the other division is the Capitals, who will finish this season at least 25 points ahead of Detroit. Who are the Wings displacing in the years ahead?
For now, they have six more games this season, four of them against teams they're chasing. Once again, Larkin and the Red Wings are looking up at most of the Eastern Conference, knowing why things have changed and wondering when they might change for the better.
"We’re running out of runway and we have to end the season here on a positive note," Larkin said. "We have tough competition, but we have two weeks left to figure something out and end on a positive note to go into the summer."