Compuware, Not Just a Hockey Arena

A parking lot view from the front of Compuware Arena.



PLYMOUTH, Mich. - It’s hard to imagine that over 40 NHL players present and past have called a small suburban city outside of Detroit their home. Compuware Sports Arena, is not only home to the Junior Hockey Plymouth Whalers of the OHL, who have won seven division titles in their current uniform, and ten overall, it's also a place that is host to high school graduations, as well youth hockey, indoor soccer and a drive-in movie theatre.

Opening in 1996, Compuware isn’t the biggest arena, with a capacity of 4,500 in the NHL-size arena. This and much fewer in the Olympic-sized arena, but many people in the area have been able to see David Legwand, Bryan Berard, Justin Williams, Stephen Weiss and many other future NHL stars here as teenagers.

It was originally built by owner Peter Karmanos, so the Whalers, then the Detroit Whalers, could have a permanent home, as at the time, they were sharing home arenas with the Oak Park Ice Arena and the Palace of Auburn Hills.

Other youth hockey is also very popular ar Compuware.

”My kid has been playing here since he learned to skate, and I wouldn’t dream of him playing anywhere else,” says hockey dad Robert Smith.

In additions, Livonia high schools Churchill and Stevenson, as well as Northville High School, are just a few of the schools who have had graduation ceremonies at Compuware, at one time or another, with such a convenient seating capacity, it is also a fairly short drive from those schools.

Around the time of graduations, when the weather heats up and the hockey ends, the parking lot is turned into an old time drive-in theatre, which features double feature movies on three big screens, and is one of the only drive-in theatres still around that area today.

But after the summer months turn back to fall, it’s usually a weekend filled with the Whalers on the NHL ice, and open skate or the Catholic Central High School men’s team on the Olympic side, as that’s been their home ice arena for the past couple of years.

When you first walk into the place, it's no different than any other ice arena you go to for open skating, or to see someone you know play hockey, but when you step into the NHL-arena at around 7:05 pm on a weekend, you feel that buzz that's been in this state for so long. The buzz that makes hockey such an important part of what makes Michigan such a great state.

People around the area do get excited, since the season began with pre-season games on Aug. 29, the Whalers are looking to rebound from a year ago, which saw them bounced out of the play-offs in the second round by the eventual league champion Windsor Spitfires.

“This is my NHL team,” says Whalers fan Christopher Baird,” I can see future stars as kids right here and right now, playing because they love the game, and not money.”

From officer, to driver

For New Jersey born and bred Vinnie De Rossi, being a cop was not always his dream. Growing up, he really didn’t have a passion for anything in particular, but after attending Morris County Community College for a few years, copying off of his friends a bit, and working a full-time labor union job dealing with criminals and drugs, he felt he needed a career that could satisfy his needs and give him a stable future.

The opportunity to be a police officer came along after he turned 23, and he decided at the time it was the best thing for him to do if he wanted a steady career for himself, so he joined the academy. “It was horrible,” he said, waking up at 4:30 a.m. and not getting home until 7 p.m. five days a week, but it was what he needed to do to for 21 weeks to become a cop.

But after graduating through the police academy on a Thursday, he was on his first official duty that Saturday, with a training officer, performing the same job his uncle had for over 35 years of his life. He would be gone for 1-2 months at a time, but it was a career, and where he met his future wife through a mutual friend.

They had a good relationship, up until their marriage, when Vinnie was 26, and that’s when things began to turn a bit sour. Vinnie said he was never the best husband, didn’t really treat her as well as he thought he could, now looking back on it, but said then again, he wasn’t a bad husband.

All that took a back seat one cold morning in February, 1991, when driving on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey to work in the snow, a car spun off the road, then came back on and ran right into Vinnie’s which threw him into the divider, where two more cars then hit him, breaking all of his ribs on his right side, and shattering his sternum, among other injuries. He couldn’t breathe well at the time, but remained conscious through the entire event, remember the Jaws of Life were needed to remove him from the wreck.

It took him two weeks in the hospital before he could go back home, and he had to sleep on his back for two years to recover from the injuries, which still today, give him bad back cramps, as well as changes in the weather hurt him. After the injury, as Vinnie puts it, his marriage was basically over. He went home, and all was normal for a short while, before one night she told him she was going to stay at her mother’s for the night, and with the condition he was in, he was in no position to barter.

He was shutting down emotionally, and when she returned, he just felt like “it was gone” and their marriage just “wasn’t right” anymore. They didn’t really work at their marriage, nor did they seek any counseling, however, if they had, Vinnie says by now they probably would have a family right now, and would be doing just fine.

The divorce was swift, and Vinnie says his wife told him, he reminded her of her father, a former cop, who cheated on his wife, whom they later divorced. He gave her what she wanted, and only said,” Leave me the t.v.”

He has never fully recovered from his accident, but got back to work at a female college, as head of security for a few years, but didn’t enjoy that as much as being a cop, and subsequently quit.

One of his friends was a limousine driver, and convinced Vinnie to give it a shot, to which he said it was easy to do with his injuries, and the hours were flexible, so he began driving a limo. After a few years of doing that, he broke away from that company, and began driving his own people, starting with one steady customer, who then recommended his friends to Vinnie, where he began driving them now and again when they needed.

But for the New York Yankees and Jets season ticket holder explains, he’s sort of quit on himself, and feels he is just getting by nowadays.

He explains he feels that he is wasting what little intelligence he has left, but it still grateful that he made it through his accident.