'He never missed anything': The late, great Mike Loftus was all about family and hockey

Over the course of four decades, Mike Loftus told countless stories, all of them compelling, to readers of The Patriot Ledger and the Enterprise.

Since his death on July 21 at age 65, following a battle with lung cancer that cut short a well-earned retirement, people have been telling endless stories about him.

Stories about his encyclopedic knowledge of hockey , which he put to good use during his most high-profile gig as a Boston Bruins beat writer. Stories about his innate kindness to everyone he met, from the biggest professional sports stars to entry level journalists fresh out of (or still in) college. Stories about his wickedly dry sense of humor.

Stories about his lifelong devotion to his two kids, Jamie and Ben.

This is one from that last group.

"Truly everything you can imagine that would be an unreasonable request (he honored)," Jamie Loftus recalled this week. "I was writing an anthropology paper about strip clubs my freshman year of college and didn't realize that I wasn't old enough to go to a strip club, so my dad drove me to an 18-plus night at Club Alex's in Stoughton. Then I sort of got really nervous when I got there, so we just sat at a table and shared a basket of fries. I had to fudge the paper. That was a fun one."

Loftus, a lifelong Brockton resident, was incredibly detailed when it came to his years on the Bruins beat. Nothing escaped him when it came to his kids, either. If they needed something tangible (like a ride) or something intangible (like emotional support) he was front and center.

"He would drive us everywhere because my brother and I are idiots and never got driver's licenses, for some reason," said Jamie, a 31-year-old comedian/author who lives in Los Angeles. "I used to do these 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. radio shows in Boston and he would drive me there and then come get me. He'd drive me to horrible comedy shows and stay (to watch my set) and then drive me back, whether I had done well or not, and was always cool about it."

"As a father, he never missed anything," agreed Ben, a 27-year-old writer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. "For someone who was so dedicated to his work like he was, he never missed anything that my sister had going on or I had going on, even stuff that we told him he could miss. He wouldn't miss stuff like me being third chair tuba in high school. He had to be there."

Local flavor

The elder Loftus certainly was there for South Shore hockey fans, showing up at Bruins practices, optional skates, preseason games and playoff showdowns. Fellow scribe Mick Colageo, formerly of the New Bedford Standard-Times, remembers Loftus missing just one Bruins home game −it conflicted with Ben's graduation from Emerson College.

Loftus played hockey − poorly, to hear him describe it − at Brockton High and made the sport his life's work. He had a keen interest in South Shore hockey people − from well-known ones such as Charlie Coyle (Weymouth), Brian Boyle (Hingham), Mike O'Connell (Cohasset), Kevin Stevens (Pembroke), Tony Amonte (Hingham), Jeremy Roenick (Marshfield) and Mike Sullivan (Marshfield), to the kids just eking out a living in the minor leagues.

He covered the Bruins, yes, but also high schools and colleges as well as the early days of the women's professional game. His farewell column from 2020 was basically a celebration of hockey in this area .

"It wasn't just professional hockey, it was hockey at every level, especially kids from the Patriot Ledger area," said former freelance sportswriter Matt Kalman. "If any kid at any level was from your area, he was on top of it and knew exactly what they were doing and where they were and pulled for them as best he could and tried to be as supportive as he could of their careers and promote what they were doing. That just always resonated with me. It was funny the way he would always stand up for his South Shore guys when we would talk about hockey."

Loftus' approach to his craft was low-key, like his speaking voice.

"Mike was just a kind and decent man who kept his head down and did his job without fanfare or silly tweets or hot takes," said Eric Russo, the Bruins' senior manager of digital content. "We need a lot more people like him."

"There's been such proliferation of hot-take experts who hog up all the attention," agreed Kalman. "But there's no doubt that if you read a Mike Loftus story on the Bruins, you definitely learned something you hadn't known before or didn't see in the game. It's unfortunate that at times he would get overshadowed by people who were louder and more ridiculous."

Colageo recalled how Loftus treated Bruins players with respect, noting, "He never lost sight of the fact that the professional athletes that he wrote about were people. ... You develop relationships with players, not by going out and partying with them in the North End, but in the sense that you understand them as people."

'He was so professional'

Loftus, who started at the Ledger as a Northeastern co-op student and left only briefly for a two-year gig in the Patriots media relations department in the mid-1980s, joined the Bruins beat for the 1988-89 season. He logged plenty of miles on the road before the Ledger pulled the plug on sportswriter travel in the late '90s. Steve Conroy, the Boston Herald Bruins beat writer, said even that setback showed Loftus' true colors.

"Just these past few years we (at the Herald) have stopped traveling during the regular season, for the most part. I know how difficult it was for Mike (to give that up) in the beginning," Conroy said. "As beat guys, you pride yourself on being there, on always being in the room, always talking to people. When we stopped traveling I had to model my job after how Mike did his. He was so professional. He could have just thrown his arms up and said, 'Oh, well, I'm not a real beat guy anymore,' but he most definitely was.

"He always had a question for the coach that was off the beaten path. Working for an afternoon paper, he always had to have something different (for a story angle) and he always did. It was really amazing to watch him work and he took such great pride in it."

"Truly a good man," said longtime Boston Globe NHL writer Kevin Paul Dupont. "A sweetheart, in (the) best sense (of the word)."

Fan club was wide ranging

Hearing all these people, including the Bruins on their official Twitter/X feed, chime in about their dad has been comforting to Jamie and Ben Loftus amid their grief.

"If you knew Dad, he was a very private guy and he was never big on boasting," Ben said. "He never bragged about all the cool stuff he did. Hearing all these people reach out (has been gratifying)."

"Whenever we saw our dad working, it was palpable how well-liked he was," said Jamie. "But he didn't brag about it. It was cool to see names I recognized over the years (checking in on social media) and then people I had never even heard of who were impacted by him. It's been really nice to see that outpouring."

Conroy said the other Bruins beat writers "have to put our heads together" to come up with a way to honor Loftus during the 2024-25 NHL season. In a way, though, anytime you're watching hockey or playing hockey or just thinking about hockey you're remembering him.

Although he covered everything from beach volleyball to swimming to Super 8 baseball for the Ledger, sticks and pucks and bluelines were encoded in his DNA. "He loved it to his damn bones," Jamie said with a laugh.

"I'd be watching a West Coast game at 11 o'clock at night," said Brockton's Kevin Flanagan, who had Loftus as a regular guest on his "Wicked Pissa" Bruins podcast, "and I knew the only other guy in Eastern Massachusetts who was watching the same game was Mike. And he probably had his notepad out."

Visitation will be held at Waitt Funeral Home (850 North Main St., Brockton) on Thursday, July 25 from 4-7 p.m., followed by a memorial service at 7 p.m. Donations in Mike Loftus' memory can be made to the American Red Cross . His obituary can be found here.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: 'He never missed anything': The late, great Mike Loftus was all about family and hockey