Fantastic fan

Saying Crystal Caputo is a connected Calgary Flames fan is a significant understatement.

The Thunder Bay resident bleeds Calgary red and gold. Her basement recreation room, painted in the official team colours, is a kind of shrine to honour the club she loves. She has the standard items many fans might have – framed photographs, jerseys, blankets and pillows – but it’s the endless amounts of smaller Flames knickknacks that make her obsession stand out.

Flames tissue paper, billiard balls, a lunch box, piggy bank, Rubik’s cube and many more items give the basement room its unique character.

Caputo is already known locally to many as one of the most devoted Flames’ fans. But that’s not enough. Now she’s after national recognition.  

Come Tuesday, March 15, Caputo hopes to be officially recognized as the team’s most connected fan through Sportsnet’s Most Connected Fan online contest.

“I was a Roger’s employee so I was never able to do this,” she said about the contest. “This is the first year that I was eligible so I wanted to come out swinging. It’s the national recognition that I want.”

The contest, now in the semi-finals, features videos of super fans expressing why they believe they’re the club’s top fan. Through the website, users can vote for who they believe is most deserving of the title.

As of Sunday morning, Caputo was in second place with 8,754 votes. She is only slightly ahead of third place Chris Wilson’s 8,335 votes, but frontrunner Dan Johnson appears to have the momentum with 12,053.

Caputo began her relationship with the Calgary Flames when she was six years old.

“I was a tom boy and all the boys liked hockey so I figured I should like hockey too,” she said. “My mom was a single mom so I didn’t have a dad to teach me anything about hockey. One day I was watching hockey and I saw the Calgary ‘C’ on the ice. I’m thinking ‘my name is Crystal, and I love the colour red, so this must be my team.’”

But the fondness of the team didn’t become a total obsession until later.

Her husband, Frank Caputo, was more of a hockey fanatic than she was and hoped a bribe would encourage her to take her hockey enthusiasm to the next level.

“He made a deal with me that if I started paying more attention to hockey he would buy me anything Calgary I wanted any time I see it,” she said.

One thing led to another, and now the couple have a room in their basement that rivals any sport’s gift shop.

“One day we just looked around and said ‘where did all of this come from,’” she said.
The contest’s grand prize includes four tickets to a Flames regular season game, a tour of Sportsnet’s broadcast facilities and a signed Calgary Flames jersey.

Online votes will be counted until Tuesday, March 15.