THE ART OF OCTOPUS TOSSING : NHL TRADITION ALIVE AND WELL.

Byline: Keith Bradsher The New York Times

The secret to throwing a large octopus onto an ice hockey rink is to boil it first for 20 minutes on high heat with a little lemon juice and white wine to mask the odor.

A well-boiled octopus can be hurled close to 100 feet, its rubbery purple tentacles waving, and will bounce and roll satisfactorily across the ice when it lands. A raw dead octopus is a smelly ball that will stick to the ice on impact and often leave an inky stain.

``They just splat'' when not boiled properly, said Alphonse C. Arnone, a fish monger at the open-air Eastern Market here.

For more than 40 years, Detroit hockey fans have had the peculiar tradition of lobbing dead octopuses onto the rink whenever their beloved Red Wings reach the National Hockey League playoffs. A record 54 octopuses hit the ice here in a single game as the Red Wings lost last year's NHL finals.

Octopus throwing is a ritual so celebrated here that the team's management is preparing to hoist a 35-foot-wide plastic-foam-purple octopus into the rafters this weekend at Joe Louis Arena. The Red Wings have a guaranteed birth in the playoffs this year, with their first game scheduled here Wednesday, and are favored to win their first Stanley Cup trophy since 1955.

The Red Wings set an NHL record a week ago Friday night by becoming the first team to win 61 games in a season, beating the Chicago Blackhawks, 5-3. No fewer than 16 octopuses flew onto the rink in the game.

According to local lore, Peter Cusimano, a former fish monger, lobbed the first octopus - a four-pounder - in the playoffs in 1952. That was the year the Red Wings swept the Stanley Cup semifinals and finals in eight games.

``It was like a good luck omen,'' said Cusimano, who now runs a local restaurant, where he serves marinated octopus slices in a sea-food salad. ``The octopus has eight legs and we were going for eight straight.''

Because the hockey league has expanded to 26 teams from six in 1952, it now takes 16 victories to win the Stanley Cup. Some sales-hungry fish mongers now suggest that fans throw two octopuses tied together to make up the difference in legs.

In the years since the practice started, a complex octopus etiquette has grown up. Boiling them is only the first step.

Octopus hurlers try to buy tickets for aisle seats, so that they can stand up quickly after the Red Wings score and take a good windup without hitting the person behind them.

The experienced thrower grabs the octopus around the middle of the tentacles, with the head down near the back of the thrower's knee, and swings with an overarm motion, as though lobbing a grenade.

``That's the only way you're going to get any leverage,'' Cusimano said. ``You try to throw it like a baseball and you're going to throw your shoulder out.''

Inexperienced octopus throwers sometimes make the mistake of holding the tentacle tips, only to have the octopus head break off during the windup. John Messina, 44, a fish wholesaler who has been throwing the sea creatures since he was 17, described what happened at a game when an elderly woman had the misfortune to sit behind someone unfamiliar with the proper technique:

``She was rather dignified, and there was this octopus in her lap. He had part of it in his hand and part of it was in her lap back there.''

Strictly speaking, it is against the law in Detroit and other NHL cities for a fan to throw anything on the ice during a game. And while no one has been hurt by a flying octopus, and no octopus thrower has ever been prosecuted, the team's management does try to discourage the practice.

As a result, fans resort to a wide variety of stratagems to smuggle the octopuses into the Red Wings' arena. Messina usually stuffs an octopus into a zip-lock plastic bag and slides it down the front of his black pullover with the red octopus insignia.

``It looks like you've just got a pot belly, like a typical beer belly,'' he said. ``If I didn't have the plastic bag, I would have had a stinky belly all night.''

Some people smuggle in plastic-wrapped octopuses under their hats, but Messina tried that only once. ``You've got to be careful when you walk, because if your hat falls off, the jig is up,'' he said.

Carrying in the biggest octopuses can involve some discomfort. ``Wrap it in plastic, put on a heavy coat, and hope it's cold out there,'' advised Nove A. Tocco, another Eastern Market fish monger.

After successfully and discretely launching an octopus onto the ice, Red Wings fans still have a problem. Their hands stink.