Red Wings strip longtime NHL veteran of captaincy letter before regular season and confirm his replacement

"When I got here last year, I knew Larkin was the captain, but we had six, seven rotating (alternates), and I didn't even know who wore them on any given night. We're Original Six.

All my years here, there was clear definition of who was going to (wear the A). But that didn't prevent ... when Nik Kronwall was a younger player or whoever else was around that group ... Kris Draper and Kirk Maltby, they didn't wear A's, but they led.

That's what we're going with. Every coach, every staff gets to determine who the leadership group is, and inevitably it's, 'Well, we can't leave him out,' so you add another guy in. Pretty soon three-quarters of your team is in the leadership group. You may as well have the rest of them in on it.

I don't have leadership meetings where we bring guys in. If our staff doesn't have a good handle on what's going on with the team and we need to meet, then shame on us, we're doing a poor job of communicating every day. A lot of the leadership stuff is done that way. We meet individually with players on a regular basis, whether it's casual in the meal room or it's official in an office. Everybody does it differently.

C's and A's are important, but at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. It's what you can bring as an individual to provide some sense of leadership.

Those younger players are still evolving in that (leadership) role, and they have a lot of help around them - guys who've worn those letters for a long time. I expect our younger letter-wearers to lean on Kane and Copp and Compher and Chiarot and whoever else had them last year. Lean on them.

They all have good experience, and the ones that were wearing them, I don't expect them to change one bit. They've been great, so we're in a good spot."