The Daily: Caputo Always Had Time for Red Wings Talk; Mazur Four in Four for Griffins

The post The Daily: Caputo Always Had Time for Red Wings Talk; Mazur Four in Four for Griffins appeared first on Detroit Hockey Now.

Pat Caputo

Red Wings in Case You Missed It

When my colleague Bob Duff and I drove to Grand Rapids to see the Red Wings farm team beat the Manitoba Moose in a AHL playoff clinching game Friday, we had a lengthy list of possible topics of conversation.

We need to sort out what the Detroit Red Wings should do, or can do, this summer to improve a disappointing hockey team that hasn’t played a playoff game since the Barack Obama administration. That should have occupied the entire ride.

But what we ended up talking about instead was the passing of long-time Detroit journalist and radio personality Pat Caputo who died this week after a short battle with cancer. Bob and I had both known him for decades. Bob recalled how welcoming Pat was when he started covering the Detroit Tigers in the late 1980s.

You meet many people in your life’s journey but meet very few as memorable as Caputo. With his bombastic approach on the radio and his columns at the Oakland Press, he was the big bang in many of our universes. His sports knowledge was encyclopedic, and his opinions were explosive and plentiful. His verbal jousts with callers were legendary.

But what Bob and I talked about Pat was what a quality man and entertaining person he was on a personal level. Even though I was USA TODAY’S hockey columnist for more than three decades, I covered all of the Detroit Lions home games for decades and enough Detroit Tigers games to know all of the characters in the Press Box. Pat was one of my favorites.

His death is a major loss for those who knew him and certainly for avid sports fans. Before the NFL draft, Pat would do a deep dive into the prospects. If you listened to Pat, you felt both entertained and enlightened. Before an NFL draft, I made sure to catch some of his shows about prospects because I trusted his take on players. He worked at his craft.

We will all miss Pat’s voice in the Detroit sports world, particularly hockey fans. The NFL and the Detroit can dominate sports talk radio. It’s not easy for show hosts to carve out space for the Red Wings. But Pat, who always enjoyed playing recreation hockey, always worked Red Wings talk into his show time. Fans appreciated that about him. The Inside Hockeytown show, even with the respected Ken Kal and Daniela Bruce, won’t be the same without Pat’s passion. The Detroit Red Wings and Tigers issued tributes to Pat this week.