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Driven - February 15, 2016 - Vol. 69, Issue 12 - Ken Campbell
The hamlet where Hall of Famer Pat La-Fontaine’s family settled when they moved from St. Louis is 35 square miles and home to 34 lakes, which means you can’t walk a mile without getting your feet wet. There’s Cass Lake, Clam Lake, Huntoon Lake, Little Silver Lake, Upper Silver Lake, Pleasant Lake, Loon Lake, Lotus Lake, Schoolhouse Lake and Wormer Lake, among others. There’s also Our Lady of the Lakes Church, Christ of the Lakes Catholic Church, Williams Lake Church of the Nazarene, Great Lakes Baptist Church and Wellspring Bible Church. The town’s nature center alone has 11 ponds on it. And just in case you needed to be clubbed over the head, the Charter Township of Waterford has trademarked the term “Lakeland Paradise.” The serial number is 76611742. You can check that.
It turns out Dylan Larkin could take a hint, too. He didn’t grow up on one of the hundreds of ponds that run off those lakes in Waterford, but it was just a short walk down the street and a few backyard shortcuts to a pond that ran off Oakland Lake. It was there Larkin laboriously planted the seeds that have germinated into one of the best, and most unlikely, rookie campaigns in the NHL this season. Sure, he’d play shinny with his older brother and cousins and the kids in the neighborhood, but what has him in the NHL at the age of 19 and in the conversation for the Calder Trophy is what Detroit Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill calls “unbelievable inner drive.” Long before the others would get there and long after they left, Larkin would be out on the pond by himself, working on his skills and finding his inner Zen. “Just me and a puck and a net,” Larkin said. “That was my childhood. Up here (in the NHL), you want to put up points and win, but there it’s just about hockey.”
It’s right around then that you ask to see his birth certificate. He doesn’t have it with him, but he assures you there is no mention of Saskatchewan on it anywhere. After all, Larkin lived what was supposed to be the quintessential Canadian existence. And, as it turns out, his Canadian roots run deep. His father, Kevin, is originally from suburban Toronto and had a hockey scholarship to the University of Maine until he shattered his kneecap playing junior hockey. Kevin was also a top-notch soccer player, the son of Irish immigrants, so at 23 he went on a soccer scholarship to the University of Southern Indiana. It was there he met Denise Jordan, got married and settled in the Detroit area, where he has a business distributing supplies and furniture to beauty salons. Kevin’s brother, Jimmy, was a member of the Canadian national soccer team, and their mother still lives in Toronto. “I have a buddy who’s originally from Sarnia who does it right up with floodlights on the pond,” Kevin said. “On a Saturday night, the kids would be out playing until midnight and we’d all be inside watching Hockey Night in Canada.”
The results of all those hours on the pond in Waterford are now on full display 38 miles southeast at the Joe Louis Arena. Larkin would have to chase the puck all the way down the pond if he missed the net, and he’s now one of the most explosive skaters in the NHL. But it also shows in Larkin’s face, which has the perennially rosy cheeks of a kid who spends a lot of his time outside in the winter. It sure isn’t going to help him get a legal beer in his hometown any time soon, and it prompted one of his teammates to give him a SpongeBob SquarePants toothbrush and a bottle of gummy bear vitamins when the Red Wings held their Secret Santa gift exchange.
It’s one thing to break into the NHL at 19. With players being coached, nourished and prepared for competition better than they ever have, it’s becoming increasingly common. But it’s quite another to break in with an organization that prides itself on making sure its prospects are overripe. It’s not in the standard Red Wings player contract that every player is mandated to spend two or three years on an iron lung traipsing around minor hockey’s backwaters, but it’s pretty well understood that’s the way Detroit does things. In fact, when Larkin informed the Red Wings last summer he was ready to turn pro after one season at the University of Michigan and a bronze medal with the U.S. at the World Championship, the first thing Wings GM Ken Holland told the family was to make sure they were comfortable with that determination. “I told Dylan and his family that if he was sitting on a bus from Grand Rapids to Rockford in November,” Holland recalled, “that was their decision.”
Turned out it was the right one for everyone involved. Larkin has helped the Red Wings so far, and he’s helped himself. His base salary is $925,000, and he’s a shoo-in to earn his capped performance bonuses totalling $350,000. He got an extra $50,000 for being selected to the All-Star Game, and he’s well on his way to hitting his other bonuses. But think about this for a minute. Larkin is the youngest player to play a regular shift with the Red Wings in a quarter of a century. Keith Primeau was 18 years and 10 months old when he first appeared for the Red Wings in 1990. Before that you have to go back to Steve Yzerman in 1983. At the age of 19 years and 71 days when he made his NHL debut, Larkin was older than Shawn Burr and Martin Lapointe when he debuted, but Burr and Lapointe did not become fulltime Red Wings until they were 20. And while everyone around Larkin is loathe to make comparisons, there’s no doubt some are envisioning Yzerman-like things for the young man who is already being compared to Jonathan Toews. There are those who think it’s only a matter of time before Larkin is wearing the ‘C’ in Detroit. And in case you haven’t noticed, when the Red Wings have a player they like, they tend to keep him around for a long time. “He’s going to be here forever,” said Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg, who broke into the league when Larkin was just six. “He’s that special.”
In the end, he may not be Jonathan Toews, but he will be Detroit’s version of Toews. “He’ll be the conscience of the Red Wings,” Holland said, “the way Steve Yzerman, Nick Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk and ‘Z’ (Zetterberg) have been.”
For his part, Larkin does not shy away from the comparisons. He is in an environment where he’s set up for success, playing the wing on the top line with Zetterberg, his childhood idol, and Justin Abdelkader. He’s playing in an organization that has established a winning culture and has players like Datsyuk and Zetterberg to show him how to live like a pro. At his exit meeting last summer, Larkin was looking for some direction, so Holland told him, “to follow Luke Glendening around like a puppy dog.” Every day, Larkin would rise at 5 a.m., to make the 45-minute drive into the city to work out with Glendening and some other Red Wing players at a downtown Detroit gym, and he now shares a house with Glendening and Riley Sheahan and their two dogs. They don’t take shortcuts, so Larkin doesn’t take shortcuts. His inner drive and quiet confidence are huge factors. “I had 12 goals at Christmas, and I want more goals,” Larkin said. “I want more ice time, and I want to be better on the power play. That’s just how I am. Today, we had to get off the ice because the New Jersey Devils are coming on, but I wanted to stay out for 20 more minutes. I’ve always wanted to be the best player in the world. It’s hard, but there’s no reason I couldn’t be. I’m in a great organization, and I’ll just keep working.”
One of the reasons Larkin cited for signing with Detroit last summer was that he felt he might have a better chance of making the team now that Blashill had replaced Mike Babcock as coach. Blashill isn’t so sure Larkin wouldn’t be a regular in the lineup even had Babcock stayed in Detroit. When Blashill was coaching Detroit’s AHL affiliate in Grand Rapids last spring, Larkin joined the Griffins for their Western Conference final series against the Utica Comets after playing in the World Championship and signing with the Red Wings. The plan was to use Larkin along the half wall on the power play, so after the morning skate prior to Game 5, Larkin was out with Griffins assistant coach David Noel-Bernier long after everyone had left the ice, coming off the half wall and shooting pucks at an empty net. Incensed, Blashill told Noel-Bernier to immediately get Larkin off the ice. “It looked to me like a young kid who had too much energy and not enough brains,” Blashill said. “We put him on the power play and in the second period, he walks off the half wall and goes shelf. My assistant comes to me and says, ‘That’s what he was working on for 20 minutes.’ You can watch the skill set on TV, but it’s the inner drive, the perseverance, the maturity, the confidence…those are the things that allow guys to make the jump early.”
