RICHMOND, Va. — I didn’t get to watch the Penguins regularly until the 1995 season began, when my cable company in Kent, Ohio, began carrying KBL. I was amazed watching Jaromir Jagr, Luc Robitaille and Ron Francis on a regular basis, but was almost just as amazed listening to the thrilling play-by-play and hilarious, post-goal exclamations of this fellow, Mike Lange, who announced the games. Penguins hockey became a must-watch that season, appointment viewing. Alas, right before the 1995-96 season began, I moved to south to North Carolina, doomed to hear only the occasional snippet on a national broadcast.
That is, until a few years later, when the internet arrived!
Since Lange moved to the radio, I’ve had the good fortune to listen to hundreds of games…I tend to prefer it over TV in a lot of cases. Penguins games go great with a dog walk, or a little late-night sketching. As Game 7 against the Senators moved into its late stages last May, and overtime became a certainty, I switched off the TV, dialed up The X on my phone, and moved to the backyard…if the season was to end suddenly, I wanted to make sure I spent its final minutes with the Hall of Famer and the Ol’ Two-Niner. Thankfully, Chris Kunitz’s second-overtime shot found the back of the net, creating yet another amazing Lange memory.
We’re not going to be able to enjoy him forever, either…the last few summers, I’ve found myself bracing for an out-of-nowhere retirement announcement. I was afraid it had happened last August, when the team reported that Lange would be scaling back his workload. Thankfully, it was just for road games. Hopefully, we’ll get to appreciate a few more seasons before he hangs up the headset for good.
ROB ULLMAN / DKPS
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