DETROIT — Trying to read someone’s body language can be a dangerous game.

But in the case of Dylan Larkin, the erstwhile Red Wings captain, it really wasn’t all that difficult. We’ve been doing it for years now in Detroit, watching the shoulders sag and the eyes grow distant as the Stanley Cup playoff drought worsened, the weight of unmet expectations grew and the hometown star’s disappointment mounted.

This week, though, the 30-year-old Waterford native finally reached a breaking point. And even before Thursday’s news broke that he’d “had enough,” according to his agent, you could see Larkin had decided to quit playing pretend in a Red Wings uniform.

Even when he scored the tying goal late in Monday night’s shootout win at Edmonton — Larkin’s first tally since that awkward season debut amid the boos at Little Caesars Arena three weeks ago — he celebrated like he’d won $2 on a scratch-off lottery ticket. Larkin’s body was there, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.

In Minnesota, perhaps. Or maybe Washington or New Jersey or Carolina. Wherever it was, it wasn’t with the Original Six franchise that made his dream come true by drafting him more than a decade ago.

“I think the last couple days on the road trip, you could sense that things were a little bit off with him,” said Shawn Horcoff, the Wings’ interim general manager, “and he was growing maybe a little bit more frustrated.”

There’s no maybe about this, though. Nearly six months after delivering a trade demand that made him a pariah with the only NHL fan base to ever cheer him, it was well past time to end this charade. And whatever silly notions some might’ve entertained about a reconciliation with Larkin, we can at least put those to rest now that the Wings’ No. 1 center has gone AWOL — a decision that reportedly was finalized after a meeting with his agents Wednesday night — and the team has suspended him without pay.

“My initial plan was to try to fix it,” Horcoff said Thursday night, addressing the media shortly before a nationally-televised game against the Chicago Blackhawks. “I wanted to try to do what I could to keep Dylan here and in a Red Wing jersey. And, clearly, I was unsuccessful doing that.”

That’s certainly not his fault, nor is the organizational dysfunction that preceded Horcoff’s promotion and helped create this mess. But whatever Larkin’s reasons are for wanting out — and he has yet to explain them publicly beyond a vague mention of “personal stuff” — they’ve become irrelevant now. So does his impatience, it seems, because as Horcoff made it clear Thursday, he’s not going to be strong-armed into making a bad deal just to accommodate a captain who has abandoned ship.

“How long it takes, I'm not sure,” said Horcoff, who only began his on-the-job audition for the permanent GM title in Detroit six weeks ago. “But I'm prepared to wait as long as necessary to make sure that the return that we get is something that is good for the Red Wings overall.”

Armed with a full no-trade clause in his contract — an eight-year extension he signed in March 2023 — Larkin has gradually relented on the teams he’d agree to waive it for, expanding an initial short list to as many as 10 teams recently. But finding a fit with that group of Cup contenders, particularly with the Wings eager to find comparable NHL-ready talent in return, has been “difficult,” Horcoff acknowledged.

The wait has been, too, especially for Larkin. And unlike his fellow USA Hockey teammate, Connor Hellebuyck, the former league MVP who refused to report to training camp in Winnipeg and was finally rewarded with a trade to New Jersey last week, Larkin agreed to show up to work in September, even though it felt like a hostage situation, at times.

Yet while that good-faith effort bought him some silence after the early barrage of boos at LCA, Thursday’s about-face guaranteed his legacy in this town will forever be tarnished. All that talk back in September about trying to “build trust again with my teammates and with the fans” goes out the window, too, along with a lot of No. 71 jerseys, I’d imagine. As sports cities go, Detroit's not one that easily forgives, or forgets.

Larkin sits 10th all-time on the franchise list for goals (278) and points (649), but his 12-year career here will end with a lone playoff goal in his only postseason appearance, which came way back in 2016 at the end of his rookie season.

Still, while this is essentially his final power play with Detroit, the puck will eventually find his stick. And it’ll be up to Larkin to decide whether to pass or shoot. If nothing else, there’s some added incentive for Larkin to do the latter now. His holdout will cost him a tidy sum — $41,237.11 daily — and when I asked Horcoff on Thursday if this latest pressure point could help expedite a deal, he said he’s “hopeful” it would.

“I mean, the truth is, when you have a player of Dylan's caliber available, your phone rings daily, and my phone rang a lot today,” Horcoff said.

Problem is, some of those calls are coming from interested teams — “strong interest,” he emphasized — that don’t match up with Larkin’s to-go order.

“There probably are certain teams in the league that, if they were on his list, it would be easier for us to come to a deal and come to an agreement,” added Horcoff, who still has another deal to figure out with unsigned — and unhappy — defenseman Simon Edvinsson. “But unfortunately, at this point, we're not there yet.”

And yet here the Wings are, in spite of all this “nonsense,” as head coach Todd McLellan described the off-ice drama surrounding his team, sitting just one point out of the final playoff spot in the East after Thursday’s 4-1 win over Chicago.

“This has been going on for too long, and that's all we've ever talked about,” McLellan said. “We just played a heck of a game tonight on a day that could have went either way. Coming back from a road trip, all the other stuff that went on … but the group pulled together and played like a team.”

A team that’s ready to move on without Larkin, since he's fully committed to doing the same.

“Obviously, it's tough,” said Moritz Seider, the defensive stalwart who seems tailor-made to be the Wings’ next captain. “But in the end, you just want him to be happy, and if that's not here, hopefully it's somewhere else. It's kind of hard to put that player aspect aside and just see it as a friend, but ultimately that's my goal: him being happy, us being competitive. Hopefully, we get a good return.”

Surely, Larkin knows he won't be able to say the same.

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