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Joe Louis Arena Tickets - Buy Detroit Red Wings hockey tickets for exciting home games!
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Joe Louis Arena / Detroit Red Wings
Joe Louis Arena isn't old or even aging. But it's not very modern either. Let's be clear: there is nothing wrong with the place. There are no posts in anybody's way. The building is roomy. The seats are comfortable. The place is fine. But it is amazing -- and a bit disconcerting -- to discover that an arena that is less than 30 years old is somewhat outdated. After a night at the Joe, one wonders if the Red Wings have noticed some of the nifty recent changes in arena structure. Then again, boring sometimes work very well. To understand how it is that this building ended up how and where it did, one needs a quick history lesson. For 72 years, Detroit played its home games at the Olympia, a charming edifice in a very uncharming part of town. When the NFL Lions bolted Tiger Stadium for the Pontiac Silverdome in 1975, the hockey team got itchy skates. They started talking with Pontiac and made a temporary deal. Losing the Lions to the suburbs hurt badly. Losing the Red Wings would have been devastating. So, the city turned to then owner Bruce Norris and asked, "What can do we do to keep you downtown?" Before anybody could say Alex Delvecchio, the team suddenly was getting a building paid by taxpayer funds. Joe Louis was built next door to Cobo Arena, which had been the Pistons NBA home arena and still serves as a concert site. (The Pistons decided they didn't want to share Joe Louis with the Red Wings and moved to the Silverdome in 1978. A decade later, they got their own place -- the Palace of Auburn Hills.) It had plenty of meeting spaces and a lot of room with a view of the Detroit River. The Red Wings (actually Olympia Entertainment) took over the running of everything in that area. To make sure Pontiac didn’t come back with an offer the team couldn’t refuse, the city went to work on the hockey building immediately. As a result, they built the Plain Jane of arenas -- an effective, undramatic structure that had a lot of seats and served the purpose well. But the city didn't think too far ahead. The first problem is just getting there. Located in a corner of downtown, Joe Louis is hard to drive to. As noted above, unless you are already in downtown Detroit, you have to come via freeway. In itself, this is an adventure in Detroit. Something always seems to be under construction or being re-routed. When the freeway system was built, it wasn't intended to be diverted into this corner of downtown. If you choose to drive to the game, you'll probably end up parking in the ramp next to the rink. That's okay in one way -- it's a very short walk and you are under a roof most of the way. It's bad in another sense. The city has you where they want you. So, cough up the 15 bucks and move on. See the notes on parking below for other ideas.
Okay, you have arrived at the rink. For most folks, you now must hike up 33 stairs. For some odd reason, the ticket offices are downstairs but most people can't enter the building that way. In 1979, nobody probably thought twice about that sort of thing. Unless you have a fetish to emulate Sylvester Stallone, this now seems weird and tiresome. Once you get inside Joe Louis, you will quickly remember who owns the team. Before he bought the Tigers, Mike Ilitch purchased the Red Wings from Norris. One now sees where Ilitch got some of the ideas for Comerica Park. The hallways of Joe Louis are very wide and clean. There are plenty of concession stands to please the palate in just about every conceivable manner. (As noted in the Concessions area below, the prices are quite reasonable.) The same is true for the Souvenir Stands. There are a couple of vendors in the middle of the hallways but, for most part, the concession stands are against the walls. As a result, this is an easy arena to move around the concourse. In an effort to keep folks focused, the team installed large red curtains in the openings that lead to the stands. This serves two purposes. It keeps the noise inside the rink and forces folks in the corridors to focus on what they want or need. In some buildings, it would look forbidding. Here, it fits very well. This is a franchise that has gone through two glory periods. They won four Stanley Cups between 1949-55 and three more from 1997-2002. Since the last Cup, they have been one of the league's better teams. So, they have had some outstanding NHL players. These guys -- and some of the stars from the late 70s, early 80s era when they were known as the "Dead Wings" -- are duly noted all over the concourse with banners. (Curiously, the team put up smaller plaques honoring such players as Leroy Goldsworthy, who scored four goals in 39 games in the early 1930s.) The team's 10 Stanley Cups get special notice as you walk around the place. The Greatest Red Wing of them all -- Gordie Howe -- is honored with a gigantic bronze statue near the main entrance. It is a fitting tribute for the fellow who held just about every career NHL scoring mark until Wayne Gretzky came along.
Joe Louis is a two-tiered bowl. The lower level seats are almost all season tickets, running $76-85 per seat. The sightlines are fine, the aisle is wide (but rather steep) and the rows aren't cumbersome. We were there for a preseason game and the arena was only half-full. David, an usher who was working near the Zamboni end of the ice, understood this and showed leeway when some ladies arrived in the middle of the first period and wanted to go to their seats. The ladies clearly didn’t know where anything was located in the building and David calmly told them where the bathrooms were and what kind of beer was being sold in the seats. This must be an Ilitch point of importance because this same kind of service was also noticeable during an April visit to Comerica Park. (Although the arena is primarily used for hockey, Joe Louis has hosted a variety of events. David said, at some concerts, the arena has transformed some men's room to women's rooms. It's a small thing but, as noted above, the Ilitchs do customer service well.) There are 23 rows in the upper part of the bowl, where prices run $22-76 (At this writing, the team has several games where they are offering $9 tickets -- one of the best deals in all of pro sports). It's nosebleed heaven if you sit one of the rows near the top of the building. But since the rows are as vertical as possible, you do get a good view of the action. It may not be exciting architecture but this arena was built with the idea that everybody inside would be able to see and hear everything. Joe Louis stole one idea from its predecessor. In the early 1970s, the Red Wings were one of the first NHL teams to come up with the idea of luxury boxes. At Olympia Stadium, they moved the press row from the second level of the building to the third. They also built some boxes just under the roof of the joint. At Joe Louis, the luxury boxes are also near the ceiling. There are a lot of them (81, according to the team's website) and they surround the rink. If you want to see the action, however, you need to step out seats on the balcony. It's not fancy but it is efficient. This is one of the more conservative teams in the league when it comes to amusing their fans during stoppages. The center ice scoreboard made a couple of attempts to get fans going. The music (surprisingly little Motown was played the night we were there) wasn't overly intrusive. Shots on goals are listed on the end boards and the out of town scoreboard is underneath the luxury boxes opposite the press box. Between periods, the team offered a couple of on-ice activities that seemed to only vaguely interest the fans. In other words, the Wings did what was probably expected of them but little more. Fans in Detroit don't come to see a guy try to put on a t-shirt just came out of a freezer. They came to see Chris Chelios, Henrik Zetterberg and Domink Hasek play.
In addition to Red Wings' games, Joe Louis hosts one of college hockey best holiday tournaments -- the Great Lakes Invitational. The CCHA has staged many championship series there and the NCAA has been there times for their Frozen Four event. This is a busy place from September to June. It's a hockey building first and foremost but JLA has served many purposes. The 1980 Republican Convention was held there. The first event in the place was a college basketball game. The NBA Pistons and WNBA Shock have used it from time to time. It has been used for arena football, pro wrestling and lacrosse. Going to a game at Joe Louis is like going to your favorite mom and pop restaurant. It is the arena answer to comfort food. Red Wing games are presented in simple and straightforward fashion -- and everybody in town seems to like it that way. One can see (and even understand) why somebody looking for a glitzy, showy night out might sneer and call the place old-fashioned. The folks who run the rink will happily take that as a compliment.
Concessions For a hot dog and $3.75 for a sausage sandwich is cheaper than most NHL arenas. Naturally, the specialty of the house is Little Caesar's Pizza (Ilitch owns the company) for $2.50. Detroit is a meat and potatoes eating town so you won't find sushi here. But there is a very good deli-type place called Stuff N' Turkey that offered filling sandwich for $5-7. As with Comerica Park, the beer comes in big quantities and is a bit pricey ($5.50-8.25).
Souvenirs
Parking
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