Detroit Red Wings Fans Keep Throwing Octopuses on the Ice — Here’s Why

Animal rights activists are urging the NHL to “toss this merciless tradition and put into effect stricter laws.” Why do lovers have the bizarre tradition?

Feb. 19 2024, Published 10:14 p.m. ET

Hockey spectators saw any other octopus hit the ice in a recreation between the Detroit Red Wings and the Calgary Flames on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. So, what’s up with this bizarre habit? Why do lovers throw octopus on the ice throughout hockey video games?

At the sport, fanatics threw a real octopus — which needed to be shoveled off the rink — and a crammed animal version — which a referee scooped up by hand. And because it turns out, the octopus-tossing is a tradition Red Wings fans had been following for more than 70 years.

Fans throw octopus on the ice all through Red Wings video games as a part of a decades-old superstition.

The Detroit Free Press explained the octopus-throwing tradition in 2018 as the native seafood store Superior Fish — the place Red Wings fanatics stocked up on octopus ahead of hockey games — ready to close its doors.

After coming thru its archives, the Free Press found a 1984 article that offered the starting place tale. That article says that the eight tentacles of the octopus represent the 8 playoff victories that have been as soon as had to win the Stanley Cup.

“The foundation of the world-famous Detroit octopus throw is traced to 1952 when, during the third recreation of the final sequence in opposition to the Montreal Canadiens, Pete Cusimano, an east aspect fish marketplace owner, celebrated the first Red Wing purpose by means of throwing an octopus onto the ice,” the 1984 article learn.

The article went on, “The Wings won the sport and the sequence, and Cusimano reportedly claimed that his sacrificial octopus had influenced the outcome. Since then, Cusimano has confirmed up at each and every Wings house playoff recreation with an octopus, firing it iceward at the first Red Wing goal.”

Nearly three dozen octopus hit the ice all through a Red Wings recreation in 2017.

At an April 2017 game between the Red Wings and the New Jersey Devils, spectators threw 35 octopuses on the rink, according to DetroitRedWings.com reporter Dana Wakiji. Why? Because that was once the ultimate recreation held in the now-demolished Joe Louis Arena before the crew’s move to Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena, in keeping with Yahoo Sports.

As for the recreation on Feb. 17, photos posted on Twitter by way of the Winged Wheel Podcast show that the fan who tossed the real octopus smuggled that cephalopod carcass into the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary by means of taping it to his torso. He got a price ticket for his movements, and when different lovers presented to lend a hand pay the nice, he asked for all donations to visit the Jamie Daniels Foundation instead, as the Winged Wheel Podcast stated in a follow-up Twitter post.

Thousands of other folks supported a petition calling for an end to the “disrespectful and brutal tradition.”

On the In Defense of Animals web site, greater than 17,000 other people threw their fortify at the back of a petition calling for an end to the octopus-throwing at NHL video games.

“This disrespectful and brutal tradition must in the end end!” the petition author wrote. “Animals should now not undergo for the sake of a ridiculous sports activities tradition. Humans have endless entertainment options, and if sports activities groups need to use animals as their mascots, they will have to be certain that those animals are venerated and handled with admire.”

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