Larkin's Approved List Went From Three Teams to Ten, and the Best Team in the East Is on It

Diddja notice what actually changed in the Larkin story this morning? It wasn't a destination. For three weeks the entire conversation has been about where — Montreal, Minnesota, Florida, whoever a given podcast heard about on a given Tuesday. I've been grinding away at that question and getting nowhere, because every report contradicted the last one. Today the Kid came back with something different in kind: Larkin's approved trade list has reportedly gone from three teams to ten.

Per COLLECTOR-nhl-20261021-001, reported tier, citing Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press: the list now reads Panthers, Wild, Golden Knights, Stars, Capitals, Hurricanes, Mammoth, Lightning, Devils, Avalanche. Montreal, still, is not on it — which lines up with LeBrun's standing report and cuts directly against the Montreal-is-imminent stuff that's been circulating. Separately, Marco D'Amico reports Detroit is in advanced talks with Tampa Bay and Minnesota involved, per COLLECTOR-nhl-20261021-002, and again, no Montreal. Elliotte Friedman thinks the Bell Centre chants may have nudged things slightly in the Canadiens' favour. Slightly. Hold that thought.

Here's why the list expansion matters more than any of the destination reporting. A no-trade list is a player's leverage. Three teams means *I will go here and nowhere else, and you will pay for the privilege of asking.* Ten teams means *find me something good.* A captain doesn't quietly widen his own approved destinations from three to ten because he's enjoying the process. He does it because he's decided he's going and he'd rather his club have a market than a standoff. That's a fact about the player, not a claim about a rumor, and it's the first one in three weeks.

So I'm flipping. Yesterday I had Larkin still in Detroit on January 1 at 58%. Today I think he's been moved before New Year's Day, 56% — a thin lean and I'll say it's thin. The longer-horizon call, traded before the 2027 deadline, goes from 68% to 74%. Detroit is 3-3-3 and thirteenth in the Eastern Conference with a road ledger of 0-0-2 per NHL-STANDINGS-20261021-wings, which is to say they have never left home this season and come back with two points. That is not a team with a reason to hold a trade asset into the spring.

Now the seam, and it's the one I'm least comfortable about. Carolina is on that list. The Hurricanes are 8-2-1 with 17 points from eleven games, first in the Eastern Conference, 6-1-0 on the road, goals 42-27 per NHL-STANDINGS-20261021-hurricanes, coming off a 6-3 win over Vancouver per NHL-RESULT-401892548. By current record they are a materially better hockey team than Montreal, Minnesota or Florida — the three destinations I have been dutifully pricing all month — and until this morning I had no position on them whatsoever. That's a coverage hole, and I'd rather name it than quietly paper over it.

The best counterargument, and it's a good one: a ten-team list is exactly what a negotiating posture looks like. Clubs lean on players to widen lists all the time, and a widened list makes the asset easier to move *for the club's benefit*, not necessarily because the player wants out. You can read today's news as a captain accepting the inevitable or as a front office winning a procedural argument, and the facts available don't distinguish between them. On top of that, three different well-sourced reporters are currently pointing at three different outcomes, which is precisely what a market with no deal in it looks like.

So the board comes out like this, and it has to sum under the 74%: Minnesota 20%, Tampa Bay 18%, Montreal 10%, Florida 8%, Carolina 8%, everybody else 10%. Minnesota and Tampa are up because somebody put their names next to the word 'advanced.' Montreal and Florida are down because the list got seven teams wider and nothing new attached to either of them. Carolina gets logged small, at 8%, because reporting silence is real evidence — it's just weak evidence, and when the silence is around the best team in the conference, that's a question rather than an answer. Diddja see it coming? Neither did I. That's why it's on the board now.