Woods to Call Final Red Wings Game on Wednesday

The post Woods to Call Final Red Wings Game on Wednesday appeared first on Detroit Hockey Now.

Paul Woods

Paul Woods will call it a day after he calls the final game of the NHL season for the Detroit Red Wings on Wednesday against the Florida Panthers. The radio analyst on Red Wings broadcasts will hang up his headphones following the game and head off into retirement.

Oddly enough, it was a couple of random calls out of the blue that led to the two Red Wings experiences that changed Woods’ life.

He was a minor-league forward with the AHL Nova Scotia Voyageurs, top farm club of the Montreal Canadiens, in the fall of 1977. Following practice, a team official was pointing him to a pay phone in the arena hallway, informing Woods there was a call for him.

It was the Red Wings on the other end of the line, specifically, Wayne Maxner, coach of the club’s AHL squad.

“He says, we’re thinking of taking you in the [NHL] waiver draft,'” Woods recalled. “Would you come if we draft you?”

He took a second to catch his breath and to pinch himself, because his dream was on the brink of coming true.

“I really wanted to beg,” Woods said, “I just wanted to say, ‘Please do anything. Just take me.'”

The Red Wings did take Woods, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Woods Broke Into The NHL With The Red Wings

He made his NHL debut with the Wings during the 1977-78 season. Collecting career highs with 19 goals and 42 points, Woods helped Detroit make the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since the 1969-70 season.

“I wanted to be an NHL hockey player at a young age,” Woods said. “I used to tell people in my hometown that I was going to do that. They’d all laugh, and it was the funniest thing they ever heard in their life, you know. But I just kept at it.

“I really did believe it, and I just kept getting better and better, and then next thing you know, I’m playing the NHL against some guys who were your childhood heroes.”

Woods Moved Into The Radio Booth In 1987

He stayed with the Red Wings as a player through the 1983-84 season. In 1987, Woods was approached about joining play-by-play man Bruce Martyn in the radio booth to call Red Wings games.

“They just called me and asked me after I got done playing,” Woods said. “And I started thinking about it.

“I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll give that a shot.’ At least one day I’ll be able to say, ‘I did that.'”

He’s been doing it more often than any broadcaster in Detroit sports history. First with Martyn and then with Ken Kal after Martyn retired in 1995. Woods has called more than 3,000 Red Wings games.

And now, his time to step aside has also arrived.

“To have gone this far and to have seen so many games, it’s just beautiful,” Woods said. “I loved hockey from the time I was six years old.”

And it all started while wearing the winged wheel.

“The Red Wings were my first squirt house league team for the first two years,” Woods said. “And now I’m with this franchise for more than half a century. It’s been an amazing run, and I’m very, very thankful.”

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