Growing up in Michigan, I have seen some of the sports world’s greatest arenas and stadiums come and go. This list includes Olympia Stadium, The Silverdome, Tiger Stadium, and now The Palace and Joe Louis Arena. The Joe has been a place cemented in Hockey history ever since the Red Wings first stepped foot on the ice there. It is where legends were born and where “Hockeytown” began. In my lifetime, so many big moments in Detroit sports have taken place inside Joe Louis Arena. It is where a lot of my favorite athletes got their start and made a name for themselves. These players include Steve Yzerman, Brendan Shanahan, Kris Draper, Dylan Larkin, Nickolas Lindstrom, Pavel Datsyuk, and let’s not forget Gordie Howe. The list goes on and on. This place has had more big names touch the ice than any other stadium in the country. You can feel the passion, the competitive fire, the excitement, and the history when you see and enter this place. It’s an amazing feeling to witness and it's something everyone needs to do before this place closes its doors. Being inside the Joe Louis Arena is a rush and something that keeps a smile on my face from the moment I can see it and doesn’t end until a few days after the game. It is going to be a sad day when this place closes and is then demolished.
Some people are overjoyed that the Red Wings are moving to Little Caesar’s Arena and this place is closing its doors. While some people are happy the Wings are moving, a lot of us are sad to see the place go. It was a place that many of us went to as a child and continued to go to as we grew up. The place was exciting even when the Wings were having a down year. Granted there has not been many down years since we have the longest playoff streak active right now in Professional Sports. The streak is up to 25 straight seasons with a playoff appearance which is insane and sometimes hard to obtain. With the announcement of the Wings moving out of Joe Louis some cities are now calling themselves the new HockeyTown. Let me just say this right now: you will never be HockeyTown and you will never come even close to becoming it either. Detroit is and will always be HockeyTown if the Detroit Red Wings are rooted here. No team can compare to the history of Joe Louis and The Red Wings period.
The Joe Louis Arena opened its doors December 12th, 1979 and hosted its first game fifteen days later on December 27th, 1979. This organization has brought four Stanley Cup Championships (1997, 1998, 2002, 2008) to The Joe.
So, as we look forward to the opening of Little Caesar’s Arena, the air around The Joe is bittersweet. You can feel its last breaths being breathed as you enter the arena and take your seat to watch one of the last Wings games played there. I just recently went to the Minnesota Wild game on March 26th and you could really start to feel the arena slowly fade away. It was a sad feeling but I know that the history and passion of this place will carry over to the new arena. So, don’t be sad about this historic place; be excited about the future and what it must hold for the Wings because we are HOCKEYTOWN and we will always be no matter where we play.
To Joe Louis Arena, you will be missed.
To The Little Caesars Arena, welcome to Hockeytown.
