The Octopus

The Octopus

 The Octopus

 The NHL is a league of strange traditions and superstitions, from the playoff beard to the throwing of ball caps for a hat trick. Individual teams have their own quirky traditions, and among these the Detroit Red Wings have one of the best-known and oddest of all: They throw octopuses on the ice for good luck, especially at home games and during the playoffs. There’s nothing in the name ‘Red Wings’ that would suggest an octopus connection, nor does there seem to be any link to the city of Detroit, but as random as it may seem, there is in fact a logical reason in the origin story of this now-hallowed tradition.

The tradition starts to make more sense when you realize the first fans to throw an octopus at a Red Wings game were brothers Pete and Jerry Cusimano, owners of a fish market in town. This was in 1952, when the Red Wings still played at Olympia Stadium, and the NHL consisted of just six teams. At the time, the Stanley Cup playoffs consisted of two best of seven rounds, meaning it took eight wins to earn the cup. On Aprl 15, 1952, the Red Wings had a post-season record of 7-0, having already swept the Toronto Maple Leafs and well on their way to doing the same to the Montreal Canadiens. Not only were they on the verge of bringing home the Stanley Cup; an eighth win would make them the first team in NHL history to have a perfect post-season. The Cusimano brothers chose an octopus because its 8 legs represented the 8 wins required to bring the Stanley Cup home. If the Red Wings had lost that pivotal game, the octopus may have stayed a one-time event—but the Red Wings won, making history, and the octopus on the ice was seen as the good luck charm that helped it happen. A tradition was born.

The octopus-hurling waned during the lean years of the ‘70s and ‘80s (though fans did christen the new Joe Louis Arena with the animals on its opening night in the 1979-80 season) but was revived with a vengeance when Detroit made it back to playoff contention in the 1990s. In 1995, fans threw 36 octopuses on the ice in a single game. That same season, Detroit officially embraced the octopus as a mascot of sorts, constructing two massive purple octopuses to hang in the rafters of Joe Louis Arena during the playoffs—two of them because, as the league as expanded, it now takes 4 rounds (16 games) to win the Stanley Cup. The octopus is named Al for head ice manager Al Sobotka, who is the retriever of the octopuses thrown onto the ice before and during games. In 1996, two workers at a Detroit seafood retailer managed to throw a massive 50-pound octopus onto the ice during the Western Conference Finals. The gargantuan creature earned a place of prominence on the hood of the Zamboni for the rest of the game.
Other NHL clubs have tried to imitate the Red Wings tradition with varying degrees of success. Some make sense, like the sharks thrown on the ice at San Jose Sharks games. Others are more nonsensical. Nashville Predators fans started throwing catfish on the ice when they’re playing the Red Wings during the 2002-03 season. Fans of the Florida Panthers started throwing rats (plastic, thankfully) to celebrate goals after forward Scott Mellanby killed a rat in the locker room with his stick, then used that stick to score twice during the game. The tradition was embraced to such an extent the NHL had to make a rule change in the off-season, allowing teams to be penalized if their fans delay the game by throwing objects.

Of course, not everyone’s a fan of the octopus. When the Red Wings were facing the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals, Pittsburgh seafood wholesalers took IDs for octopus purchases, refusing to sell them to anyone from Michigan. During the 2010 Western Conference Semifinals, a San Jose fan threw a shark on the ice with an octopus in its mouth. The good luck worked, and San Jose beat Detroit to advance to the Conference Finals. Though the habit of twirling the retrieved octopuses has come under some fire and can now only be practiced by the Zamboni doors, it’s safe to say Al the Octopus is in Detroit to stay.