Two Reporters, Two Lists, One Player. The Trade Got Less Likely, Not More.
Larkin traded by the 2027 deadline 0.57 → 0.52. New Florida-specific call at 0.23.
Fourth day in a row I'm writing about this man's no-trade clause and I'm not going to pretend otherwise — but the file changed in kind today, not just in degree. Friedman reports Larkin would approve a move to Florida. Seravalli reports an NHL executive calling Montreal the only club that can both contend and meet Detroit's asking price, and notes Larkin's approved-destination list excludes every Canadian franchise. Both reported tier, both credible, and they do not contradict each other on facts.
They contradict each other on implication, and that's the part worth your time. The club that can reportedly pay isn't on his list. The club that's on his list hasn't been confirmed as able to pay. Every day this gets covered it reads like momentum, and what it actually describes is a Venn diagram where the overlap keeps looking thinner. Anybody can be traded. Not everybody can be traded to a team that both wants him at the price and sits on the approved sheet.
So I'm cutting the headline trade position from 0.57 to 0.52 — five points back on the same week I raised it five on the captaincy news, which is what a live information gap does to a number. And I'm logging the destination-specific version at 0.23, because my board has been carrying a generic trade probability for ten days while every piece of reporting that names a destination names Florida, where Barkov is out six to eight weeks on the timeline I already hold. Seventy-seven against on that one, most of it the question nobody has answered: can the Panthers actually meet the price?