By @MichaelCaples –

DETROIT – Josh Franzen and his wife flew all the way from Houston to participate.

When it’s your last opportunity to skate at Joe Louis Arena, you do what you gotta do.

Franzen (yes, that’s how he actually spells his last name) and hundreds of Red Wings fans from across North America converged on The Joe on Monday, Nov. 7, for the third edition of ‘Rent The Joe’ – a day-long function at the home of the Red Wings featuring multiple games for players of all ages and skill sets.

“I’m all the way from Houston, pretty much flew in one night,” Franzen said. “I saw the event and I was like, ‘I have to,’ with it being the Farewell to The Joe season, it’s probably the last time it’ll ever happen. Being from the area myself, I grew up here as a child, watched the Wings play, watched them win tons of championships.

“With the history of this building, and the opportunity came up, I just had to be here, I had to.”

‘Rent The Joe’ organizer Erin Labour explained how the event came together; turns out, it all started with the Wings’ following on Reddit.

“It all started on a Reddit post on the Red Wings subreddit; we all started to talk about how do we get a chance to play at Joe Louis Arena,” said Labour, himself a native of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia who now resides in southern Ontario. “We started in 2014 and we tried to get a chance to play and it fell apart, because a concert came through and bumped our ice time, which is respectable, so the guy that was organizing it then decided he didn’t want to pursue it any further.”

From there, Labour took over the event, and has watched ‘Rent The Joe’ grow in a hurry. In the latest skate, the participants were even joined by Red Wings alums Jason Woolley and Petr Klima.

“I took the ball and we played here, we had 88 skaters and four hours of ice time on Halloween last season. And then we played again in April, and we had 60 skaters and four hours of ice time again. Now, we’re up to 160 skaters and five games including the alumni and now we have vendors and a food truck outside. It’s all fans wanting a chance to play here, play at The Joe. This is a pretty legendary barn and it’s a pretty special place to lace up.”

Woolley said it was a fun event for all parties involved.

“It’s fun,” the former Red Wings defenseman said. “These guys get to play at Joe Louis Arena, mix in a couple alumni – Petr Klima and myself – we’re having as much fun as they are, so it’s all good.”

‘Rent The Joe’ was more than just a series of pick-up games, however. It also served as a fundraiser effort for the Michigan Warriors hockey program.

“In the first round of what we’ve termed ‘Rent The Joe,’ we got Justin Dunn – I believe his official title is vice president of player operations for the Michigan Warriors – and through that we became friends and through our connections at ‘Rent The Joe’ we became friends,” Labour said. “He began working with the Michigan Warriors to help them. He’s a veteran and a wounded veteran at that, so I wanted to get some sort of charity involved because it gives a little more credibility to what we want to accomplish here. They said, yes, absolutely they wanted to come out and I got contacted by some other people.

“We’ve got also Detroit Performance Hockey, which is a nonprofit group that helps keep underprivileged youth on the ice and playing the sport that we’re all here to play, to love, so it’s pretty important to me to be able to have at least some grandeur or appreciation of what some people have to go through on a day-to-day basis to be able to play the sport that they’re out here traveling hundreds or thousands of kilometers for.”

Michigan-based companies All Black Sticks, Original Stix and Mitten Sports were also involved in the ‘Rent The Joe’ experience.

“I found out through All Black Sticks actually about the event to play in – I was originally just going play,” said Mitten Sports owner Charles Webb. “I talked to Erin, who runs the event. He explained what it actually is they’re doing, what charities they’re supporting, so Mitten Sports wanted to get involved and we ended up getting the jerseys for everybody, offering socks and getting everything here all free of charge to kind of give back and get people to start giving money to the charities instead of us… Hopefully, we’ll be here every year for as long as they do it even at the new rink.”

The new rink presents one challenge to Labour and the other ‘Rent The Joe’ organizers – what are they going to do with the name?

“I had breakfast with a few key people this morning and that was one of the topics of conversation; what do we do with the name of the event? I’m concerned about it because ‘Rent The Joe’ is pretty self-explanatory. I think everyone knows –we walked around with our jerseys last night, about 100 of us wore our jerseys to the game last night here and people asked and we just said, ‘we’re gonna play pick-up hockey here tomorrow.’ But what do we say, ‘Rent The LCA,’ ‘Rent The Pizzarena,’ or ‘Rent The Doughjoe,’ whatever it ends up being? We don’t know.”