The Number That Should Be Keeping Detroit's Next GM Up at Night Isn't Larkin's Name
Start with 2.8. That was Detroit's goals-allowed average over the 20-game stretch heading into the final 10 games of the 2025–26 season — a number that suggested a team with structural defensive competence, good enough to compete, maybe good enough to squeeze into a playoff spot. Then the calendar turned and the number became 4.5. Goals allowed per game over the last 10 games. A 1.8-goal-per-game spike. A 64% deterioration. That is not a slump. That is a system coming apart at the seams, and whoever takes the GM chair in Detroit needs to understand that the Larkin drama — as loud as it is — is noise next to that signal.
The final record was 41–41, and the math on how they got there tells the real story. Detroit went 10–20 over their last 30 games, 2–8 in the final 10, and the goal differential in that closing stretch was hemorrhaging at minus-1.6 per game. You do not go 2–8 because your center situation is unresolved. You go 2–8 because you are giving up nearly five goals a night and the defensive structure that held you at 2.8 allowed over the prior 20 games simply ceased to exist. Whatever broke in that final month — personnel, scheme, fatigue, goaltending, all of the above — that is the diagnostic the new front office inherits.
Look at the defensive depth chart and the numbers start to explain themselves, at least partially. Moritz Seider logged 25.1 minutes per game and finished plus-13, the strongest plus-minus on the roster and the clearest evidence that the team's best defensive player was doing his job. Simon Edvinsson was plus-7 in 43 games. But Axel Sandin-Pellikka, who played 18.1 minutes per night across 51 games, finished at minus-18 — the worst mark among Detroit's top-10 players by a wide margin. That is a significant drag on the back end, and it raises real questions about how the defensive pairings were constructed and whether the workload distribution made sense. When your third-pairing minutes are going to a player that far underwater, the 4.5 goals-against average stops being a mystery.
The offseason moves, read against this backdrop, feel like they were solving the wrong problem. Signing Viktor Arvidsson — a proven goal-scorer who posted 25 goals with Boston — addresses secondary scoring, which was a real issue. Lucas Raymond's 1.11 points per game over 47 games led the team and represented the clearest offensive bright spot in an otherwise thin landscape. But Raymond producing at that rate and the Wings still finishing 41–41 tells you the offense was not the primary reason they missed the playoffs. The defense allowing 4.5 goals a night in the games that mattered most was. Adding Chase Stillman on a one-year, two-way deal adds organizational depth. Trading Sebastian Cossa for the 23rd pick adds draft capital. Neither move patches a back end that collapsed under pressure.
Steve Yzerman's departure as GM — abrupt, with the Larkin situation still unresolved — is being framed everywhere as a personnel drama, a star-player standoff that became untenable. My read is that the Larkin storyline is real but secondary. The harder truth is that a 41–41 team with a 64% spike in goals allowed in its final 10 games does not have a roster-management problem at center. It has a structural defensive problem that requires a different kind of offseason than the one Detroit just ran. Whoever steps into that GM role needs to ask a harder question than "what do we do about Larkin?" They need to ask why a team that was allowing 2.8 goals per game in late-season play fell apart so completely — and whether the answer is personnel, coaching, goaltending, or some combination of all three that no single signing can fix.