I’m a late Gen X Detroiter, a former hockey player, and an obsessive fan in the mold of my father who immigrated from Scotland in the 1950s and immediately fell in love with the Red Wings. My boyhood culminated in a 25-year run that saw four Stanley Cup victories and a murderer’s row of Hall of Fame inductees. I also witnessed one of the more unique traditions in Michigan history: the ice at Joe Louis Arena littered with octopi.
The Red Wings’ golden era began after the late Little Caesars founder Mike Ilitch purchased the team in the early 1980s and planned to build around an all-star-caliber player from the 1983 draft. Ilitch and General Manager Jim Devellano targeted hometown phenom Pat LaFontaine as the future of the team, but the New York Islanders selected him with the third pick.
The Red Wings had to settle for the next best available player in the draft, an undersized player named Steve Yzerman.
The Yzerman era had begun, and another tradition, lost during the decades known as the Dead Wings Era, returned.
The story goes like this: Two brothers named Jerry and Pete Cusimano, who owned an Eastern Market fish wholesaler, came up with the idea that the eight legs of an octopus represented the eight games an NHL team must win to hoist the Stanley Cup. They threw an octopus onto the ice during game three of the 1952 Stanley Cup Finals between the Red Wings and Montreal Canadians. The Red Wings were a perfect 6-0 up until that point and were on the cusp of becoming the first team in history to go undefeated in the playoffs.
The octopus hit the ice, the Red Wings went on to win the Stanley Cup, and the legend was born.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the tradition fell away as the Red Wings toiled in futility.
But the team, led by Yzerman, began a slow climb in the standings, improving each year as additional draft picks began to pan out. Octopi again began hitting the ice in the late 1980s, when the team was visibly becoming a force once again.
The Ilitch-owned Red Wings began to promote the octopus as a team symbol. Soon, Red Wing fans were seen wearing merch with the purple octopus emblazoned with the winged wheel.
The 1990s saw this become a national phenomenon, as the Red Wings became a Stanley Cup contender and a national draw. Michigan transplants around the country showed up at away games to throw octopi onto the ice in Miami and Los Angeles.
Smuggling an octopus into Joe Louis Arena was a messy endeavor, and I knew guys who’d successfully accomplished it. One particular fellow craftily hid an octopus in a plastic bag that was fed down the waist and one leg of his pants in a manner that didn’t appear obvious to security. He kept it there for over two hours before the timing was just right to fire it over the glass. It takes serious dedication to conceal a dead eight-legged invertebrate in your trousers while walking around and sitting in the tight confines of stadium seating for any length of time, never mind all night.
Other teams have their own legends and traditions. The Florida Panthers have thrown plastic rats onto the ice during their playoff runs due to an odd tradition dating back to 1996, when their captain killed a rat in the dressing room with a hockey stick right before scoring two goals. Nashville Predators fans have thrown catfish, and there is a recorded instance of a San Jose Shark fan throwing a real shark with an octopus in its mouth during a game against the Red Wings.
The NHL under Commissioner Gary Bettman, a humorless corporate drone, has frowned on the octopus and pressured the Red Wings and Detroit police to kill the fun. The Red Wing dynasty of the late 1990s and early 2000s had such frequent octopus throwing that it often took several minutes to clean the ice.
Al Sobotka, the longtime building operations manager for Joe Louis Arena, would retrieve thrown octopi during games and swing them overheard as he walked off the ice, causing the crowd to explode in enthusiasm. The NHL, displeased by this, finally put their foot down in 2008 and regulated Sobotka to twirling the Octopi only inside the Zamboni gate while instituting a $10,000 fine against the Red Wings anytime Sobotka twirled one on the ice.
To be fair, it was getting out of control. Sobotka said in 1996 that he estimated 25 octopi were thrown per playoff game and claims to have once removed 54 octopi during one game in the 1995 Stanley Cup Finals.
The real demise of Detroit’s octopus tradition may have nothing to do with new league rules, local law enforcement, or Sobotka’s unfortunate firing in 2022. The Red Wings haven’t made the playoffs in eight years. They haven’t won the Stanley Cup in 16. Another Dead Wings Era is upon us.
But we should be patient. Yzerman now controls the team as general manager and is rebuilding around hometown hero Dylan Larkin, a core of talented players and future Hall of Famer Patrick Kane, who was brought in to teach a culture of winning.
Forty years ago, Yzerman’s arrival brought back the octopus. Will he do it again?
J.Z. Delorean is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
