Detroit Red Wings Director of Player Development on team prospects
Detroit Red Wings director of player development Dan Cleary discusses the team’s young prospects.
This is Part 6 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.
Inside the Michigan National Guard’s Olympia Armory, at Grand River and McGraw, is a small plaque that pays tribute to the site’s former inhabitant.
It reads, “Be it known to future generations that this site was for 60 years, 1927-1986, the location of Olympia Stadium, home of the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League.”
Before Little Caesars Arena – before even Joe Louis Arena – there was “The Old Red Barn”: Olympia Stadium, an arena of 15,000 that somehow still felt intimate despite being the third-largest in the world at its opening in 1927.
Olympia was the place to see anything in Detroit for most of its existence. Over the years, the stadium held hundreds of concerts and dozens of other events. The Beatles’ last visit to Detroit was held at Olympia in 1966. Its first event was the International Stampede and Rodeo, held on Oct. 15, 1927.
The Detroit Pistons’ first home in Michigan after their move from Fort Wayne, Indiana, was Olympia. They spent four seasons (1957-1961) there before moving to newly constructed Cobo Arena. Olympia was never meant as a basketball building, which was clear given that the Pistons played games with hockey boards surrounding the court. Not being the primary tenants, they were occasionally forced to find other venues; famously, the team was once forced to play a playoff game against the Lakers at Grosse Pointe High School in 1960.
But it was always, first and foremost, the Red Wings’ home, in which they hoisted banners for their first seven Stanley Cups. “The Old Red Barn” was a popular place among both players and fans — so much so that when the team moved to a not-quite-ready Joe Louis Arena in December 1979, nobody was pleased with the decision to leave.
“Olympia was such a beautiful building with such a great history,” former Red Wing Paul Woods told the Free Press in 2017. “The Olympia, in my mind, was a better building. It sounded deep. It had this real intensity. … I loved going to that place.”
Despite its history, by the late 1970s, the Red Wings found themselves located in a west side neighborhood that had been in decline since the 1967 riot. Originally, a move to Pontiac’s “Olympia II” to be built near the Silverdome, was in the works – the Wings were offering 10-year leases on suites at the suburban site as late as July 1977. But Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young mobilized the city in early August 1977 to keep the Wings downtown, and Joe Louis Arena – crammed onto a site next to the Detroit River – opened in late December 1979, even as seats were still being installed. That month, on Dec. 15, the Red Wings played their final game at Olympia – a 4-4 draw with the Quebec Nordiques. The Wings moved to “The Joe” on Dec. 27, and Olympia hosted its last event in February 1980 – an exhibition between the Red Wings and an alumni team. The Old Red Barn was demolished in 1986, replaced soon after by the Armory.
The Olympia has not been forgotten inside the newest home of the Red Wings, though.
Inside Little Caesars Arena (which opened in fall 2017), on the wall next to a painting of Gordie Howe, hang the original “O-L-Y-M-P-I-A” letters that decorated the outside of the building.
Contact Matthew Auchincloss at mauchincloss@freepress.com.
The series
Come back all week for our series on Detroit’s fallen stadiums:
July 21: Tiger Stadium.
July 22: The Palace of Auburn Hills.
July 23: Cobo Arena.
July 24: Joe Louis Arena.
July 25: Pontiac Silverdome.
July 26: Olympia Stadium.