ST. PAUL, Minn. — Amidst the chaos of scores of league-shaking trades Tuesday, the Minnesota Wild continue to play the waiting game on their big fish, Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin.The Wild are in daily contact with Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman and Larkin’s agent, Pat Brisson, in hopes of facilitating a trade, but there is no shortage of interest in the soon-to-be-30-year-old center, who would give Minnesota its long-needed No. 1 pivot and potentially the final piece in building a true Cup contender.The good news? The Wild were on Larkin’s original list of three teams he was interested in playing for, and Florida — one of the three — is almost certainly out after its Father’s Day splash of adding Brady Tkachuk.The bad news? Larkin has expanded his list, and it’s painfully obvious that the Wild are short on the type of assets that Yzerman wants in exchange for his top center.The fact that Yzerman, Brisson and Bill Guerin remain in daily contact, though, means Minnesota is still trying to find a way, perhaps the most logical yet complicated way being to find a third team that can help Detroit receive the type of assets it wants in a completed package.Where will Dylan Larkin land?Max Bultman, Corey Pronman and moreHow good is Larkin? How would he fit in Minnesota?We asked around.“These guys are rare,” former NHL GM Craig Button said. “I like everything about him. Dylan Larkin is a 1B all day long.”“A terrific two-way center,” said former NHLer Brian Engblom, now a Tampa Bay Lightning color analyst.“He’s the second tier of No. 1 centers,” one scout said. “But Minnesota would be pretty good down the middle then.”No, Larkin is not a superstar like Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Leon Draisaitl or Jack Eichel — true 1A’s up the middle. But he is a well-rounded, lightning-fast, ultra-competitive center who is among the top of the second group. He’s scored 30 goals in each of the past five seasons, is strong in the faceoff circle (career 52.8 percent) — a need for the Wild — and was a key cog on the 18-for-18 penalty kill that helped Team USA win the Olympic gold medal.“He’s very similar to (Joel Eriksson) Ek,” said former NHLer Ray Ferraro, now an ESPN analyst. “Now you have two almost the same centers. But if that’s the case, and you’re playing them both 18 to 21 minutes, now you’re looking at (Michael) McCarron signed, pretty soon you’re fine.“Yeah, it’s different. It’s not a traditional 1-2-3-4, center spot. Larkin’s a shooter — he’s not a creator — so if you’re thinking about who he’s going to play with, to me, it’s not necessarily, ‘Oh, he’s going to feed (Kirill) Kaprizov.’ He’s a shooter. He’s great on the power play in the bumper — one of the best in the league. In my opinion, along with his competitiveness, those are his strengths.”Button agreed that just because he’s not a McDavid or MacKinnon doesn’t mean it can’t work.“It’s like No. 1 defensemen. Every team has a No. 1 defenseman,” he said. “The true No. 1’s, what there are 12, 13 guys? Same thing with centers. I don’t think there’s 10. The next group is really, really good, and Dylan fits into that category.”What former NHLer Mike Rupp likes about Larkin and the Wild is that he fits their identity. From Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy down, they’re built around winning puck battles.And Larkin is that kind of guy, too. He’s defensively responsible and versatile enough to play down the lineup, as he did at the Olympics and 4 Nations Face-Off, or drive a top line.“It would certainly be an upgrade,” Rupp said. “It’s been a really good team for what they’ve had. Larkin doesn’t ad-lib too much. He’s not an independent contractor that tries to generate offense at the cost of everything. He plays within the team concept, which is why I think it’s a really good fit.”Said Engblom: “He’s always been a very conscientious player. He knows the game. He’s not gambling all the time. He puts points on the board. He’s got some real serious skill. I don’t think he fades away in games that get tough or more intense. I haven’t seen that.”There are concerns, of course. The Wild’s other centers, like Eriksson Ek and Ryan Hartman, are more of shooters versus dynamic playmakers. And it will be very important for Minnesota to have guys who can get their two biggest stars and 40-goal scorers, Boldy and Kaprizov, the puck.That’s why it’s a little worrisome that the Wild look like they’re walking Mats Zuccarello to the July 1 opening of free agency unsigned. Zuccarello has been caught up in the Wild’s waiting game for Larkin, as they’re wary of committing any dollars right now to players until they find out if they can execute the Larkin trade.But let’s be honest: They’re going to need wingers in free agency, so the fact they’re not willing to sign Zuccarello, who turns 39 by next season, now means they could be ready to simply cut the cord. Fair or not, the Wild were livid about how they played in Game 4 of their second-round series against Colorado after such a dominant Game 3. There’s a sense that Kaprizov depends too much on Zuccarello and that Zuccarello drags Kaprizov into the east-west game that’s the opposite of how the Wild want to play.Still, Ferraro says that because Larkin and Eriksson Ek aren’t puck distributors, be careful what you wish for in letting Zuccarello, fourth in franchise history with 271 assists, exit stage right.“Zuccarello is one of those guys for me that almost every year I think this has got to be the last one, and then he gets 45 assists, and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s not the last one,’” Ferraro said. “The money has to fit, however it’s going to fit, but any deal with Zuccarello now is a one-year deal. So it becomes really manageable.“Here’s the other thing: If you delete him from your roster, who are you replacing him with? That type of player is a really tough player to find, because he doesn’t need major minutes to create a play. That’s a really, really small platform.”Of course, if the Wild can add a winger or two in free agency to put on the second line, one option is moving Boldy up to the top line. He’s as good a passer as he is a shooter.“At the end of the day, you have two guys that had 40 goals this past year that don’t have a prototypical centericeman, as far as top end,” Rupp said of Kaprizov and Boldy. “Worst-case scenario, Larkin is on his own line, but he’s self-sufficient. He can drive his own line if you want it. It can take pressure off the other guys.”The Wild would have Larkin, Eriksson Ek and McCarron as their top three centers, with the option of moving Hartman to the wing. That’s one less top-nine wing spot to fill, with Marcus Johansson signing in Sweden and the returns of Zuccarello and Vladimir Tarasenko cloudy. Anytime you bring in a player like Larkin, it’ll take some adjusting in terms of lines and chemistry.“With all due respect for Hartman, he’s not a 1, he’s not a 2,” Ferraro said. “He’s best suited as a 3. Yes, I think it can work. One of the reasons is that both Ek and Larkin are such competitive players. They’ll make up for the attributes of the one that they don’t have, and I think you can create it in the aggregate. No. 1 centers, unless you draft him, where are you getting him? It’s a rarity that they could be moved.“Ken Holland says there’s no hockey player store. Everybody can see what a team’s deficiencies are. We can all go around the league and say, ‘Oh, this team needs a D, that team needs a scoring winger,’ and where do you go get them? There’s no hockey player store. Can’t go buy one.”Rupp pointed out that Eichel and Mitch Marner didn’t work together well in Vegas despite the two players’ obvious talents. It’s a challenge coach John Hynes will be happy to have, especially with his background with Larkin as a U.S. assistant coach.“He could fit anywhere,” Engblom said of Larkin. “Look how he played at the Olympics. If you have enough talent, coaches are going to say, ‘We’ll find a spot for you. We’ll figure it out.’ The thing that gets GMs in trouble, and it’s not their fault — you can look generation after generation and big-time players get traded and you go, ‘This guy is going to be great.’ And it’s not. Well, it’s the coach’s job to put him somewhere else where it’s great.“Chemistry is that weird thing where you put the chemicals together and you hope you don’t blow up the lab. And sometimes that’s what happens. Sometimes it blows up. But if Larkin goes to Minnesota, they have more than one talented player, and I’m sure one guy that he can be attached to.”Ferraro also thinks Larkin would be much better in Minnesota than he is in Detroit simply because of the caliber of players around him and shedding the pressure of continually missing the postseason.“He looks frustrated,” he said. “I do think, in some regard, he’s miscast as a No. 1 center. Because he’s not. Like, to be a No. 1 center, to me, it’s a 90-point guy. But I would say Carolina doesn’t have a No. 1 center. (Sebastian) Aho, to me, would be a 2. Jack Eichel is a 1, (but Carolina won the Stanley Cup). It’s not like you need a 1, but you can’t have a 2 and then a bunch of 3-minuses, which is kind of what Detroit has. The problem that Detroit has run into is you had Larkin and then you had (Andrew) Copp and (J.T.) Compher, and they’re kind of the same guy. There’s no creator, and that really becomes difficult to generate enough offense.”Rupp agreed with Ferraro that there could be untapped potential with Larkin if you surround him with a different level of talent.“He hasn’t really played with high-end guys like Kaprizov and Boldy,” Rupp said. “Maybe there’s the unknown there, too. He can make plays off the rush. He hasn’t hit (40 goals) yet. Maybe the stars align, and he’s a 40-goal scorer.”Engblom has seen players choose the Lightning and Florida Panthers because of their winning pedigree, the warm weather and tax advantages. But he said it should be noteworthy that players, whether it’s Brady Tkachuk or Larkin, have Minnesota on their short lists of places to go. Steven Stamkos had Minnesota as one of three places he’d agree to get moved to at this past year’s trade deadline, too. Quinn Hughes obviously approved his blockbuster deal to the Wild in mid-December, and after Guerin met with him in New Jersey earlier this offseason, he came away thinking that extending him will be a much easier negotiation than extending Kaprizov was last summer.A Larkin acquisition would likely make Hughes even more enthusiastic about staying.“It’s not just Florida or Tampa, it’s Minnesota,” Engblom said. “That’s really something, a feather in Guerin’s cap and the entire group, the coaching staff. They put a talented group together and now players are saying, ‘Hmmm.’ Everyone wants to go where it’s warm and blah, blah, blah. I get it. We have good warm weather here. But with Minnesota, people can say, ‘We’re cold just like you guys are, and players want to come here.’”There’s no doubt that players like Kaprizov, Boldy and Hughes have turned the Wild into an appealing spot for players around the league. Now, they sit and wait and hope they can find a way to sway Yzerman to send his captain west.If they strike out or Yzerman chooses to wait to move Larkin later in the summer, it’ll be interesting to see their Plan B. It’s not as simple as moving on to Vincent Trocheck since he’d require significant assets, and we know the Wild have few remaining.They could simply continue to be patient and wait for that perfect center — Larkin or another (Auston Matthews?) — to shake from the trees later this offseason or into next season.