On February 2nd 1954 the Detroit Red Wings played an exhibition ice hockey game against a team made up of inmates at the Marquette Branch Prison.

In the summer of 1953 Detroit Red Wings owner Jack Adams, on a promotional tour of the Michigan Upper Peninsula, made a visit to the Marquette Branch Prison. Warden Emery Jacques asked Adams if the Red Wings would play the prison’s team. The Wings’ owner, never expecting the game to actually happen since the prison didn’t even have an actual ice rink, half-jokingly agreed. A few month later, Adams was shocked when the warden called him with a news that the arrangements for the game were proceeding quickly, and that the ice rink would be  ready by early 1954. Jack Adams, a man of his word, kept his promise to play, and the plan was made for the Red Wings to come to the prison on February 2nd 1954 during a break in the Wings’ schedule

A few prison officials were initially worried about  inmates wielding hockey sticks against the NHL players, but Red Wings’ captain Ted Lindsay who had visited the prison with Jack Adams in ‘53, allayed their fears. “I was never concerned” Lindsay later remarked “Because I figured that I  could take of myself” The makeshift, outdoors, ice rink the prison built was imposing; being  surrounded by armed guard-towers and thirty-foot stones walls rimmed with razor wire, but otherwise very functional. It would be the first outdoor game ever  to be played by any NHL team.

The game-time temperature was a brisk 21°F and the weather was perfect for an outdoor game in Marquette. The entire prison population turned out to see the Red Wings, including future hall-of-famers; Gordie Howe, Terry Sawchuk, Red Kelly, and Lindsay, take on the newly christened Marquette Prison Pirates. The Prison Pirates were no contest for the Red Wings. Detroit goalie Terry Sawchuk spent most of the first period sitting on top of his net, and at one point left the ice to sign some autographs for inmates and prison officials. The Prison Pirates were still unable to score on the empty net. At the end of the first Period the score was 18-0 in favor of the Red Wings, and it was decided to stop keeping score for the rest of the game. The second period began, Terry Sawchuk was conscripted to tend goal for the Prison Pirates. Gordie Howe and Ted Lindsay also changed sides and joined the inmate squad. By the Third Period the exhausted and over-matched  Prison Pirates simply gave up, and the game became an intra-squad scrimmage showcasing the Wings’ skating, passing, and shooting abilities. When the game was over, the Red Wings team was awarded a galvanized steel trophy; The Doniker Trophy aka The Honey Bucket, and individual players were given leather wallets embroidered with the players’ name and the Red Wings’ famous winged wheel logo all made by prisoners. 

A few months later, in April, the Detroit Red Wings would go on to beat the Montreal Canadiens to win the Stanley Cup