| Detroit Free Press
Steve Yzerman breaks down naming Dylan Larkin captain, state of Red Wings rebuild
Interview with Steve Yzerman, Jan. 13, 2021.
Helene St. James, Detroit Free Press
As general manager of the Detroit Red Wings, Steve Yzerman has grown used to seeing players look worried when called into his office; usually it means they’ve been traded or waived.
However, meeting with Dylan Larkin to ask him to be the franchise’s next captain was a delight.
“Usually the reaction on their face is, oh, here we go,” Yzerman said. “So it’s nice every now and then to have positive conversations, where someone walks out of your office feeling good.”
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Larkin described how, after the deal was sealed, the new captain and former captain smiled through the masks they wore to help prevent or slow the spread of COVID-19.
“We were sitting there, just the two of us,” Yzerman said. “I really would have liked to take the masks off and have a conversation, but I am keeping this mask on because the last thing I want to do is come up with COVID, and you don’t have your mask on and you’re going to spend the first two weeks of your captaincy in quarantine due to contact tracing.
“We kept our masks on but one rule we did break, and I’m going to confess to, we did shake hands at the end of the conversation. I don’t know about Dylan, but I immediately went to the hand sanitizer afterwards, so I hope that the protocol police will accept that.”
Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter. Her book, The Big 50: The Detroit Red Wings is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Triumph Books. Personalized copies available via her e-mail.