Even though insider Elliotte Friedman mentioned the Tampa Bay Lightning as a team he was keeping an eye on for a potential Dylan Larkin trade earlier this week, reports out of Detroit state that the Red Wings forward submitted three teams he'd be open to joining and that list didn't include the Lightning.
According to Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press, the only teams that Larkin is interested in moving to at this point in time are the Minnesota Wild, the Vegas Golden Knights, and the Lightning's state rivals, the Florida Panthers.
For all three teams, there will be considerable difficulty to fit Larkin's $8.7 million cap hit under the NHL's salary cap. Vegas currently has less than $5 million worth of cap space with a number of players who are set to become free agents at the beginning of July.
The Panthers on paper have plenty of money to add Larkin, but they currently don't have a goaltender under contract for next season as both Sergei Bobrovsky and Daniil Tarasov are both pending unrestricted free agents. Quite a few of the Panthers' depth players are also in the same boat and will either become a free agent on July 1 or are eligible for an extension on that date.
Friedman mentioned previously that he felt the Wild were the main team to watch for a potential Larkin deal, and it seems that remains a real possibility.
On paper, the Wild have less salary cap space than the Panthers, but they have the majority of their important players under contract for the foreseeable future. Their main pending free agents are aging veterans, who will likely be signed to very cheap deals if they return to Minnesota. They need to convince Quinn Hughes that they're serious about winning if they want to keep him beyond next season, and it seems that adding Larkin could help move that needle.
There's always a chance that Larkin is forced to expand his trade list if a deal isn't able to come to fruition with Vegas, Florida, or Minnesota, which could allow the Lightning to re-enter the Larkin sweepstakes. For the time being though, it seems like he will not be coming to Tampa unless something drastically changes.