Wings not getting carried away with Larkin's early success as a pro
Two games into his professional hockey career, Dylan Larkin is looking every bit like the franchise player the Red Wings were hoping (praying, too, no doubt) when they selected him with the 15th overall pick in last summer's NHL entry draft.
Larkin, who decided to turn professional after an outstanding freshman year at the University of Michigan, scored two goals in a 4-2 Grand Rapids victory that evened the Griffins' Calder Cup series with Utica (New York). That American Hockey League Western Conference Finals series continues Thursday with Game 3 in Grand Rapids.
So yes, the Wings are thrilled with Larkin's start, especially after the way he performed on Team USA's bronze medal-winning team at the recent World Hockey Championships in the Czech Republic.
And yes, with Pavel Datsyuk (who turns 37 on July 20) and Henrik Zetterberg (35 in October) on the back nine of their careers, the Wings are desperate for a star to emerge in the next couple of years. They're privately as delighted as fans are by what they've seen from Larkin over the past year, but all the front-office optimism comes with a healthy dose of caution, as well.
Larkin, who grew up in Waterford Township, is just 18, after all. It's hardly necessary that the club puts him on a fast track to Detroit that they know spoiled the potential careers of other prospects in the formative years of a team that has qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs for 24 straight seasons.
"There's a big difference between now and where we were in the '80s, when I was the general manager," said Jim Devellano, the team's senior vice president. "We had been so bad and the cupboard was so bare. And when your team's not good, the coaches get impatient."
With limited options, bad teams turn to their development programs, often promoting young players before they're ready to play an intense schedule against men in the world's best hockey league. So it was for Brent Fedyk and Joe Murphy, both highly prized first-round selections (Murphy was first overall out of Michigan State in 1986). And both might have had more productive NHL careers had they been allowed to develop longer in the minors, Devellano believes.
In recent years, because they've been so consistently good for so long, the Wings have been able to allow their best prospects to stay down longer and develop into the kind of players who can succeed in the NHL.
A case in point: Landon Ferraro, drafted as a scoring forward who spent four years in the minors developing the defensive skills he'd need to survive in the NHL, and it showed when he stepped into a role on the energy line with Luke Glendening late in the season. Another: Teemu Pulkkinen, the Finnish forward who has been a scoring machine for two years the AHL. He could be a fixture on Detroit's power play for years to come.
As for Larkin's future, only one thing is certain: Don't look for him in a Red Wings uniform on opening night in Detroit this fall. The days when an 18-year-old kid walks into the NHL and scores 39 goals in his rookie season, as Steve Yzerman did after the Wings drafted him with the fourth overall pick in 1984, are rare, if not over.
But as GM Ken Holland said, it's not about age as much as it is about ability.
"I don't care how old you are, if you can play in the NHL at age 19 or 20, I'm all in. But most don't," he said. "The league is too good."
He prefers his best young players to stay in the minors until they're "over-ripe" for the NHL. Play down there in a similar system to Detroit's and learn to dominate the competition.
"Are they better served to play in the NHL for nine minutes a game, or play a lot more in the AHL?" Holland asked. "Can they bump someone down in our lineup? If you can, then you can play in Detroit. If you can't take somebody's job, if you're just on the periphery, then it's better to play in Grand Rapids. Play on the power play, play the important minutes, the last minutes of a game. That's how you develop players."
In other words, if Larkin is going to center a first or second line in the NHL as scouts widely predict, then he'll have to take a job from Datsyuk or Zetterberg. So there's no rush. Better to revisit all this when Larkin is old enough to buy himself a drink.
