Detroit Red Wings Tickets

With a three other professional sports franchises calling the city home, you would the Detroit Red Wings tickets would be a tough sell. Certainly, since hockey is considered a lesser sport by many pundits, the NBA's Detroit Pistons and baseball's Detroit Tigers must easily sell twice as many tickets as the Red Wings, right? Not exactly. During their last active season, in 2003-04, the Detroit hockey franchise sold more than 820,000 tickets and averaged more than 20,000 in per-game attendance. The Pistons featured only slightly better numbers than that during the same season, which coincidentally was their championship year, while the Tigers averaged less than 17,000 fans per game during the 2003 season. Meanwhile, the Lions averaged far more fans per game, but sold 300,000 less total tickets in both 2003 and 2004. Numbers don't tell the whole story, though. There's a reason that Detroit is called Hockeytown, and its because Red Wings fans are some of the most passionate in the country.

If You Buy Detroit Red Wings Tickets, Bring An Octopus!

Anyone who has ever bought Detroit Red Wings tickets, or at least seen the team play on television, has witnessed one of the most unique and bizarre traditions in all of sports. That tradition is the throwing of octopi onto the ice by Red Wings fans in attendance at NHL games in Joe Louis Arena. According to the team's official website, the first time an octopus made its appearance at a Detroit hockey game was in 1952 --on April 15, with the Red Wings making a run at the Stanley Cup, to be exact. In attendance at Olympia Stadium (the club's former home venue) that night were brothers Pete and Jerry Cusimano. Back then, the postseason consisted of two, best-of-seven game series, which meant that eight wins were needed to capture Lord Stanley's hardware, and since an octopus has eight tentacles, it was chosen as a sort of good luck charm by the Cusimanos. It worked, as the Wings went unbeaten through the playoffs and became NHL champions. The octopus has been around ever since.