When Octopuses Are Flying in Detroit It's . . . (Published 1996) (2024)

The secret to throwing a large octopus onto an ice hockey rink is to boil it first for 20 minutes on high heat with a little lemon juice and white wine to mask the odor.

A well-boiled octopus can be hurled close to 100 feet, its rubbery purple tentacles waving, and will bounce and roll satisfactorily across the ice when it lands. A raw dead octopus is a smelly ball that will stick to the ice on impact and often leave an inky stain.

They just splat" when not boiled properly, said Alphonse C. Arnone, a fish monger at the open-air Eastern Market here.

For more than 40 years, Detroit hockey fans have had the peculiar tradition of lobbing dead octopuses onto the rink whenever their beloved Red Wings reach the National Hockey League playoffs. A record 54 octopuses hit the ice here in a single game as the Red Wings lost last year's N.H.L. finals.

Octopus throwing is a ritual so celebrated here that the team's management is preparing to hoist a 35-foot-wide plastic-foam-purple octopus into the rafters this weekend at Joe Louis Arena. The Red Wings have a guaranteed berth in the playoffs this year, with their first game scheduled here on Wednesday, and are favored to win their first Stanley Cup since 1955.

The Red Wings set an N.H.L. record on Friday night by becoming the first team to win 61 games in a season, beating the Chicago Blackhawks, 5-3. No fewer than 16 octopuses flew onto the rink in the game.

According to local lore, Peter Cusimano, a former fish monger, lobbed the first octopus -- a four-pounder -- in the playoffs in 1952. That was the year the Red Wings swept the Stanley Cup semifinals and finals in eight games. "It was like a good luck omen," said Mr. Cusimano, who now runs a local restaurant, where he serves marinated octopus slices in a sea-food salad. "The octopus has eight legs and we were going for eight straight."

Because the hockey league has expanded to 26 teams from 6 in 1952, it now takes 16 victories to win the Stanley Cup. Some sales-hungry fish mongers now suggest that fans throw two octopuses tied together to make up the difference in legs.

In the years since the practice started, a complex octopus etiquette has grown up. Boiling them is only the first step.

Octopus hurlers try to buy tickets for aisle seats, so that they can stand up quickly after the Red Wings score and take a good windup without hitting the person behind them. The experienced thrower grabs the octopus around the middle of the tentacles, with the head down near the back of the thrower's knee, and swings with an overarm motion, as though lobbing a grenade.

"That's the only way you're going to get any leverage," Mr. Cusimano said. "You try to throw it like a baseball and you're going to throw your shoulder out."

Inexperienced octopus throwers sometimes make the mistake of holding the tentacle tips, only to have the octopus head break off during the windup. John Messina, 44, a fish wholesaler who has been throwing the sea creatures since he was 17, described what happened at a game when an elderly woman had the misfortune to sit behind someone unfamiliar with the proper technique:

"She was rather dignified, and there was this octopus in her lap. He had part of it in his hand and part of it was in her lap back there."

Strictly speaking, it is against the law in Detroit and other N.H.L. cities for a fan to throw anything on the ice during a game. And while no one has been hurt by a flying octopus, and no octopus thrower has ever been prosecuted, the team's management does try to discourage the practice.

As a result, fans resort to a wide variety of stratagems to smuggle the octopuses into the Red Wings' arena. Mr. Messina usually stuffs an octopus into a zip-lock plastic bag and slides it down the front of his black pullover with the red octopus insignia. "It looks like you've just got a pot belly, like a typical beer belly," he said. "If I didn't have the plastic bag, I would have had a stinky belly all night."

Some people smuggle in plastic-wrapped octopuses under their hats, but Mr. Messina tried that only once. "You've got to be careful when you walk, because if your hat falls off, the jig is up," he said.

Carrying in the biggest octopuses can involve some discomfort. "Wrap it in plastic, put on a heavy coat, and hope it's cold out there," advised Nove A. Tocco, another Eastern Market fish monger.

After successfully and discretely launching an octopus onto the ice, Red Wings fans still have a problem. Their hands stink. But experienced octopus throwers learned long ago how to erase the evidence. "You take Wet-Wipes and a slice of lemon to get the odor off," Mr. Messina said.

The Red Wings have begun to use the flying octopuses as a marketing tool in the last couple of years, even erecting billboards this year that show a glowering octopus clutching a hockey stick, with the words, "I want Stanley." But most octopus throwers remain reluctant to identify themselves, lest the management someday ban them from the arena.

As Mr. Messina demonstrated in a fish-cleaning area the proper technique for throwing an octopus, he initially refused to talk about whether he had ever thrown one at a game. Then he acknowledged throwing one in the playoffs last year. Then he added the five-pounder he tossed last Wednesday.

And then he admitted chucking at least 20 octopuses over the years, many of them three-foot-long six-pounders. Fish mongers here often keep these to throw while selling the smaller octopuses.

"You could hurt someone if you didn't know what you were doing," Mr. Messina said. "You've got to be esthetically perfect to be an octopus thrower."

But while Detroit's fish mongers are coy about their own octopus throwing, they benefit from the craze. Octopus sales, at $3 or $4 a pound, more than double during the hockey playoffs. The sales are particularly welcome because the city's many Italian and Greek restaurants serve the most octopuses around Christmas, so supplies are plentiful for the spring tournament.

The fish mongers' success is a nuisance for Albert Sobotka, the building manager for the Red Wings. Better known here as "Octopus Al," he has the task of scraping fallen octopuses off the ice. He always picks them up carefully by the head and swings them in the air to rouse the crowd.

The heaviest octopus ever heaved onto the ice landed in the playoffs last year, a 30-pound monster. "He was hard to handle," Mr. Sobotka said. "They put a big rubber ball in the head to make it stand up."

The sheer popularity of the octopus here has even provoked a debate over the correct plural for the sea creature. While most fish mongers use "octopi," language experts say that the fish mongers' version is etymologically unsound.

"It's a plural formed as if it were a Latin noun of the second declension, when in fact it's a Greek noun in origin," said Dr. Frederick C. Mish, the editor in chief of Merriam Webster Dictionaries in Springfield, Mass.

While "octopi" and "octopuses" are both sufficiently common to be acceptable, octopuses is three times more common. The purists' favorite, "octopodes," is virtually never used. "Other things being equal, I would probably always use 'octopuses,"' Dr. Mish said.

Whatever the correct term, animal rights advocates are not amused. "People wanting to have fun is one thing, but when it's at an animal's expense, it's not funny," said Michael V. McGraw, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "What's next, dead kittens or dead puppies?"

When the Red Wings are in the playoffs, the management throws hundreds of pounds of octopuses into dumpsters, often tossing in a little ice to lessen the smell before the garbage collectors arrive.

Yet the Red Wings have no plans to try to put the octopuses to profitable use, such as by selling them to restaurants. "I wouldn't even think about it," Mr. Sobotka said. "You don't know where they've been."