Steve Yzerman: How he sees Detroit Red Wings after free agency
Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman, July 3, 2025 in Detroit.
This is Part 4 of a six-part series looking back at the arenas and stadiums that housed some of Detroit’s greatest teams over the past century. Come back to freep.com every day this week for more historic Detroit sports site memories.
Though the  Detroit Red Wings won the most at Olympia Stadium, with seven Stanley Cups, they perhaps won the best at The Joe. It was there that the Wings claimed their first Cup since the 1950s, ending an excruciating 52-year drought in 1997. Then they repeated in 1998 (albeit with a Cup-lifting win on the road), added a third at home in 2002, and then grabbed their sole Cup in the NHL’s salary cap era in 2008 (again, on the road).
Joe Louis Arena’s significance to Detroit sports history cannot be overstated, which is remarkable given how poorly it was received when it first opened in December 1979 . Featuring old, gray concrete with fluorescent lighting poorly installed, a lack of bathrooms and no place to sell merchandise, The Joe was not beloved when the team moved from iconic Olympia Stadium midway through the ’79-80 NHL season. Mike Ilitch, who’d bought the franchise in 1982 from the Norris family after 50 years of ownership, began earning his status as a beloved owner with his continuous upgrade work on the building. He mostly succeeded, but The Joe was never beloved for its construction.
It was iconic because of who played there. Not its namesake, legendary boxer Joe Louis – he never set foot in the building, having died in 1981. But there was Steve Yzerman and Sergei Fedorov. Tonya Harding in her infamous U.S. Figure Skating Nationals win (though the attack that eventual Olympic medalist Nancy Kerrigan actually occurred a few blocks over, at Cobo Arena). Isaiah Thomas’s 1984 Game 5 playoff performance, in which he scored 29 points after the half in an OT loss to the New York Knicks. Dozens of concerts and WWE events and youth and college hockey games and octopi on the ice, all in one gray building.
And four Stanley Cups. A building named after a champion and filled with champions.
The Joe was marked for destruction in 2014 after Ilitch Holdings CEO Christopher Ilitch unveiled his plans for The District Detroit on the north side of downtown’s central business district, which included the new Little Caesars Arena. The new arena was completed in 2017, and the Red Wings began playing there that year. Their final game at The Joe was a 4-1 win over the New Jersey Devils and also Henrik Zetterberg’s 1,000th game. It signified more than just an end of an era in a building – it marked the end of the Red Wings’ 25-year playoff streak. Little Caesars Arena has yet to host a Red Wings playoff game.
The Joe was taken apart piece by piece starting in 2019; it could not be demolished due to its proximity to other buildings. The land underneath it was used to pay off a $1 billion claim against the city by bond insurer FGIC after Detroit’s bankruptcy, as the building was owned by the city after Mayor Coleman A. Young jammed through a plan to keep the Wings from moving to the suburbs.
Today, the Residences at Water Square occupy The Joe’s old spot on the river. There is no reference to what stood before.
Contact Matthew Auchincloss at mauchincloss@freepress.com.
The series
Come back all week for our series on Detroit’s fallen stadiums:
July 21:Â Tiger Stadium.
July 22:Â The Palace of Auburn Hills.
July 23:Â Cobo Arena.
July 24: Joe Louis Arena.
July 25: Pontiac Silverdome.
July 26: Olympia Stadium.