The Red Wings and Jets can make examples out of their star players making trade demands

Demanding a trade must seem like a decent idea in June. That’s when you’ve got your feet kicked up on a dock somewhere. The season is months away. Everybody in the NHL would give anything to have you. That’s what your mom says.

It seems a less attractive prospect in October. Now you’re still stuck on a team you’ve alienated, been stripped of your captaincy, and the fans have turned on you.

That’s where Dylan Larkin finds himself. It’s an instructive lesson to everyone who thinks a contract is only a contract for as long as it suits you.

Larkin is ‘hurt’ to begin the season in Detroit. I’d put triple quotes around that word if I could. The Red Wings decided to introduce him at their home opener anyway. You have to think they knew how that would turn out. If so, good for them.

The Detroit fans didn’t shower Larkin in jeers, so much as went Niagara Falls on him. The smart thing to do would have been to stand there and take it. Show people they’re not getting to you. Larkin couldn’t manage that. He swung around and stalked off while the booing was still ongoing.

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You don’t want to show your back in many places, but Detroit has got to be at the bottom of that list. The nuns in that city go for the eyes first.

“I feel bad for him,” Wings coach Todd McLellan said afterward. If so, he’s the only one. Talk about being the author of your own misfortune. You were the captain of the Detroit Red Wings, not the Rockford IceHogs. Winning or losing, you were at the top of the heap. And you’re complaining? Do you also find that the pillows at the Four Seasons are too soft?

Something’s in the NHL air these days, and it appears to be especially catching for Americans. It is the belief that your employer owes you not only money for your work, but also results. So if the team isn’t winning (or nice enough to your dog, or near a beach), you feel justified in demanding to leave.

But isn’t it your own fault that the team isn’t winning, as you are on said team? Not according to some players. They are owed success in May the way children are owed fun on summer vacation. It should just happen without their input.

The situation is particularly hilarious in hockey, where nobody can be traded. Lets remind ourselves that one player in the entire NBA has a full no-movement clause, while eight Edmonton Oilers do.

Well, great. You got what you wanted. You cannot under any circumstances be uprooted from your home. So you won’t be. Until you want to be. But only to where you’d prefer to go. Which is ridiculous.

Like Connor Hellebuyck, Larkin seemed to believe that making the demand public would put the team under irresistible pressure to move him for peanuts, to a destination of his choosing. It also appears that all the members of Team USA went drinking in Milan and decided to meet up again in Sunrise, Fla. in a few months’ time. That Brady Tkachuk managed to make this happen emboldened the Larkins and Hellebuycks of the world.

Except the opposite thing is now happening. If Detroit or Winnipeg get anything but top, top value for their want-away stars, their fanbases will revolt. That was the message being sent in Detroit. They don’t need a proper GM in place to hear it.

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It’s one thing to lose hockey games. Fans will accept that. In some cases – ahem, Toronto – it kind of turns them on. It’s another thing to lose trades you were forced into doing by a guy who no longer rates the city or the people who pay his salary.

The first thing makes you losing. The second thing makes you a loser. Nobody wants to root for a loser, because that makes them losers by one remove.

What Larkin and Hellebuyck did not consider is that their attempts to flee would become referendums on the viability of their respective franchises. Detroit would be much better off letting Larkin sit for a year than trading him for second-round picks. As he himself has pointed out, it’s not like they ever make the playoffs anyway.

By next summer, Larkin will be begging to go anywhere. He’ll take Columbus and agree to help sweep out the visitors’ dressing room. If he stays that long in Detroit, he’ll be afraid to go to Costco without putting on a wig.

People think the NHL should do something about all this. Eliminating no-trade clauses is everyone’s first idea. They should do that, but only because they are anti-entertainment. The NBA gets this, which is why it’s the far more interesting league to follow in the off-season.

But there is no need to do anything about players who won’t honour their contracts. Those players are providing all the disincentive that’s required to dissuade others. Wherever they end up, they’ll be the guys who had to flee their former homes hanging off the landing gear on a helicopter.

It’s an easy one because it’s so obvious who is in the wrong – Larkin et al. Every single move they’ve made is an own goal. No reasonable person could think otherwise.

If you aren’t willing to stick out eight years, don’t sign eight-year deals. If you’d do anything to leave, then do anything. Which means you don’t get to pick your destination.

If you set out to hurt some feelings, don’t look aggrieved when the people you’re doing that to no longer like you. Mostly, don’t come anywhere close to complaining about making millions to chase a piece of rubber around for a living. It annoys the rest of us.

In a sense, Detroit and Winnipeg are slugging for every GM in the NHL. The longer this goes on, and the uglier it gets, the less likely anyone else will be to try it.

Having no dogs in either of these fights, I hope it goes on forever. I also hope Detroit faces Winnipeg in this year’s Cup final.