DETROIT — The Red Wings needed a win like this one.
Coming home after a 1-2-1 road trip, and after scoring just three combined goals in their last three games, the sheen was starting to fade from Detroit’s early success under Todd McLellan. A red-hot division rival was coming into town. And on top of that, Patrick Kane — a key piece of Detroit’s power play — was ruled out with an upper-body injury Thursday morning.
But the Red Wings got their lift from the place they so often have over the last decade. On the night of Dylan Larkin’s 700th NHL game, Detroit’s captain gave them an early spark by outmuscling Montreal Canadiens defenseman Lane Hutson, then setting up Jonatan Berggren for a first-period goal. Then, later on, Larkin tacked on a power-play tally for his team-leading 21st goal of the season — earning himself first-star honors in Detroit’s 4-2 win over the Canadiens.
Larks stays with it for his 21st on the season! pic.twitter.com/Z1WfpGrdz2
— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) January 24, 2025
After 700 games in a Red Wings uniform, it can become easy to take Larkin for granted sometimes. He’s 28 now, and he’s had to shoulder some hard times for this franchise.
On a night his team clearly needed a win, though — and on a milestone night for himself — it was only fitting that he made two of the game’s most important plays.
“He’s a Red Wing,” McLellan said Thursday morning. “And that might sound strange — ‘well, of course he’s a Red Wing’ — but he’s 700 games (a) Red Wing. That’s special. When you can play for an Original Six team that drafted you that long, in today’s business, that’s special. So he is a Red Wing, and we’re happy to have him.”
A few thoughts coming out of the game:
1. When Larkin came into the league, he broke in on the wing of Henrik Zetterberg — playing alongside Detroit’s captain and best player, and soaking in everything that came with that.
He’s not nearly as old now as Zetterberg was then, but he’s come full circle now as the captain playing with a young, top draft pick on his wing in Marco Kasper. And Kasper is going to be way better for it.
“Marco gets to experience what Dylan did 700 games ago,” McLellan said. “Really, like he’s in the same spot, with some of the same pressures, being a first-round draft pick and all that type of stuff playing in Detroit. I look at it from that perspective, and then he can look over and ask questions, and ‘Hey did you ever feel like this? I’m anxious in this situation.’ And Dylan can tell him ‘Relax.’ Or, it can go the other way, where Larks says, ‘Hey, this is coming. You’re going to begin to feel like this with these minutes. Get prepared for it.’
“I think that experience of being in the exact same skates, if you want to call it, is valuable.”
Larkin has a ton of talent, starting with his elite skating, but the player he’s become is no longer one who relies primarily on his speed. Nor is it just his shot — though his goal-scoring touch has only gotten better with age, and now has him on pace for 36 goals this season, which would be a career high.
Above all, though, it’s Larkin’s motor, competitiveness and brain that have made him a No. 1 center — and the play he made to set up Berggren’s opening goal was a great case in point. The play started in the defensive zone, with Larkin picking up a puck, resetting, then transporting it himself through the neutral zone, chipping it past the defender and just winning a physical battle — and then still having the presence of mind to find the trailer.
It was also the kind of play that it’s easy to envision Kasper making in the future, using his speed and tenacity to skate the puck, win battles and ultimately set up dangerous chances.
That’s one reason it’s beneficial to have the two on a line together: both of them, along with linemate Lucas Raymond, don’t mind going down low and being disruptive on the forecheck. It’s been noticeable about the trio since they got put together under McLellan: all three are workers, and it helps them force turnovers and extend possessions — just as they did Thursday.
Larkin said after the game the line’s forechecking approach was “what got us going, and what tends to get us going,” and it’s easy to see why. There’s a spark that comes with playing that style that makes attacking contagious.
The Red Wings need that in the here and now, to be sure. But looking bigger picture, it’s also going to set up Kasper really well going forward.
2. I’d be remiss not to spend some time on Raymond, too, whose assist late in the first period was probably the best highlight of the game. With the seconds ticking down in the period — and just after a Canadiens penalty had expired — Raymond took the puck above the left circle and made a move inside before kicking the puck down low the other way to Alex DeBrincat.
So convincing was Raymond’s move that Montreal goaltender Sam Montembeault got pulled all the way across the crease, leaving DeBrincat the entire net to shoot at, and he buried it.
It was a great play by Raymond, who game-by-game is establishing himself as an elite winger in the league. He’s now up to 52 points on the season, a top-20 mark in the league among all skaters.
3. It was interesting after the game to hear McLellan say “Probably the biggest surprise for me, to date, is Albert (Johansson).”
Johansson was consistently scratched when McLellan first came in as head coach, following Derek Lalonde’s firing, but once Jeff Petry got hurt, the team thrust Johansson into a tough job on the second pair with Simon Edvinsson.
“I think his rise has (been) remarkable, really — unless I underestimated him, too, and then that’s on me,” McLellan said. “But he’s played steady in all three zones, there’s some fierceness in his game. When he gets engaged with bodies and battles, he wins a lot of them. He’s not the biggest guy. So, we talk about him in the locker room all the time, we’re so happy we have him. Biggest surprise, in my mind.”
That’s some really high praise for the rookie defender.
And it’s going to make it especially interesting to see what Detroit does when Jeff Petry — who skated Thursday morning — gets healthy and back into the lineup. Does Detroit go back to the veteran Petry on the second pair, where he had been? Or do they leave Johansson there, going with Petry on the third pair? It’s a decision to watch in the coming days.
4. Andrew Copp had the other Detroit goal Thursday, a short-handed tally early in the second period that made it a 3-0 game.
McLellan said they “asked (Copp) him to do a few things” before the Philadelphia game on Tuesday and “for six periods now, we’ve seen that. His legs are good. His mind is good. You put those two together and use both at the same time, good things like that can happen. Good reward for it.”
Copp has been a player whose role has elevated under McLellan, getting back onto the second line, primarily in between two of Detroit’s most skilled players, Kane and Alex DeBrincat. Obviously, the short-handed goal is a different game state entirely, but it’s still important to see him producing.
5. I thought the Red Wings were the better team on Thursday night. But make no mistake: Montreal is coming. I think you can already make a good case that the Canadiens, despite getting a later start on their rebuild, have already caught up to Detroit, Buffalo and Ottawa in the Atlantic Division, and will be right there with them competing for the playoffs in coming years.
Some of that has come via the draft, landing a first-overall pick in Juraj Slafkovský and finding an absolute steal in the second round in Lane Hutson, but it’s also been via some savvy trades by Kent Hughes — bringing in players such as Kirby Dach, Mike Matheson and Patrik Laine.
All of those players had risk attached when the Canadiens traded for them, but for the most part, they’ve been successes in Montreal.
I’ll be curious to see if Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman takes any such swings on players who can join his rising young core as this year’s trade deadline approaches. Detroit isn’t in a position to go hunting for rentals and doesn’t have the splashiest stable of pending UFAs to unload, but making a deal for a player who will be around a while might be their best potential move at this deadline.
And as Montreal’s quick rise through the rebuilding process has shown — remember, they were in the Stanley Cup Final in 2021 — the right move can be a good way to accelerate a timeline.
(Photo: Rick Osentoski / Imagn Images)
