from Ryan Lambert of Yahoo,

I guess the question I have here is: “What’s the point?” Larkin is a “franchise player” in Detroit if only because they truly don’t have a better option and more to the point, if you think your “franchise player” is a winger who’s gonna score 50-something points every year, well, that’s not a very good franchise situation overall.

Not that anyone needed to be told Detroit was a mess, and not that this contract even pushes them into a worse situation. He’s a perfectly good player with room to grow, but if you’ve worked yourself into a corner where Larkin is a $6.1 million player for you, that says a lot more about the people who are still, inexplicably allowed to run this franchise.

Put another way: You don’t have to pay non-franchise players like they’re almost franchise players just because you don’t have anyone better than that. Unless you’re the Red Wings, I guess.

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