Larkin, Red Wings 'fighting for our lives' with playoffs quickly approaching

DETROIT -- The hats flew onto the ice, celebrating Dylan Larkin’s hat trick in the Detroit Red Wings’ 6-3 win against the Philadelphia Flyers at Little Caesars Arena on Thursday. Many took so long to land that the ice crew had to keep circling back to pick them up.

Know what the Red Wings captain really wants to fly onto the ice, though?

Octopuses.

The octopus symbolizes the Stanley Cup Playoffs in Detroit, the eight legs representing the eight wins that teams once needed to win the Stanley Cup, and the Red Wings still have an outside shot to end their nine-year playoff drought, the longest in their 100 year history.

The Red Wings (41-29-9) are three points behind the Ottawa Senators, who defeated the Florida Panthers 5-1 and hold the second wild card into the playoffs from the Eastern Conference. Detroit and Ottawa each has three games remaining in the regular season. Ottawa holds the regulation wins tiebreaker (36-30).

“Let’s keep fighting for our lives,” Larkin said.

Larkin knows what the playoffs mean in Detroit.

The 29-year-old grew up in the area during the most recent glory days. He has spent his entire youth, college and pro career in his home state, and is the only player on the Red Wings roster who has appeared in the playoffs with them. He got a taste of five playoff games as a rookie in 2015-16.

Coming out of the break for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan in February, he was on a high. He had helped the United States win Olympic gold in men’s hockey for the first time since 1980. Detroit was third in the Atlantic Division.

The Red Wings went 2-2-1 in their first five games afterward, then went 3-3-1 while he sat out seven games with a lower-body injury. When he returned, they were out of a playoff spot, and he wasn’t 100 percent. He had six points (three goals, three assists) in his next eight games while the Red Wings went 2-5-1.

Can you imagine the frustration, wanting to make the playoffs so badly, watching your team struggle and being unable to do your best to help physically? Larkin talked about “going home and thinking about it all day and night, and driving my wife crazy for all the ups and downs.”

Then came Thursday.

Larkin gave Detroit a 3-1 lead on the power play at 1:50 of the second period, then a 4-1 lead short-handed 3:06 later.

Rookie forward Porter Martone scored for Philadelphia on the power play at 9:25, cutting the lead to 4-2. Had the Flyers scored again, who knows what would have happened? The Red Wings have had a habit of coughing up leads lately.

But forward Patrick Kane made it 5-2 at 7:01 of the third period, and Larkin extended it to 6-2 at 11:39. The hat trick was the third of his NHL career and first since April 2, 2023, in a 5-2 win at the Toronto Maple Leafs. It was the Red Wings’ first of the season.

“You guys know how nervous we sometimes get,” Moritz Seider, who had five points (one goal, four assists), tying the Detroit record for a defenseman, said. “I don’t know for what reason, but there have been games where we kind of just let our shoulders sink with one goal and then it kind of turns around, so it was a great response today.”

Larkin pumped up his teammates and the fans with his body language after scoring.

“Sometimes I express a little bit of emotion,” he said with a laugh. “But it was good to show emotion, I think, for our guys.”

Larkin declined to discuss how he felt physically, but Detroit coach Todd McLellan said, “Clearly, he’s skating better.” McLellan said Larkin could separate from checkers and had more pop in his shot, because he had more power in his legs.

“Everybody wants to make the playoffs, and he’s a big part of us trying to get there,” McLellan said. “And (that was) a bit of a relief for him.”

Too little too late? We’ll see. But stranger things have happened.

In 2012-13, the Red Wings were in a 3-5-3 slump and three points out of a playoff spot with four games to go. They won their last four games and made the playoffs. That was the 22nd year of their 25-year playoff streak.

They rallied from a 3-2 series deficit to defeat the Anaheim Ducks in seven games in the Western Conference Quarterfinals, then took a 3-1 series lead against the Chicago Blackhawks, the eventual Stanley Cup champions, before losing in seven games in the conference semis.

They will finish this season by hosting the New Jersey Devils on Saturday, then visiting the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday followed by the Panthers on Wednesday.

“I don’t think our locker room, our team, is going anywhere with one, two guys,” Larkin said. “It takes all of us, and that’s our sport, and that’s what it took tonight, and that’s what it’s going to take the next three.”