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.”
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