When Mike Lange arrived in Pittsburgh in 1974, Bob “The Gunner” Prince, the longtime voice of the Pirates, welcomed him with a gift: an hourglass-shaped egg timer.
Each time it ran dry, Prince instructed the new play-by-play broadcaster of the Penguins to recite two key centerpieces of sports radio: time and score.
So more than four decades later, when Josh Getzoff arrived in Pittsburgh and began calling preseason games, Lange had a gift ready. In the press box between periods at PPG Paints Arena, Lange passed along an egg timer and a Pittsburgh broadcasting tradition.
“He kind of hunched over looking at me, with his finger pointed, and said, ‘Time and score,’” Getzoff remembers. “Time. And score.”
This offseason, after years of watching the sand sift through the hourglass, Lange decided the time had come to pass along something else: his seat in the play-by-play chair.
The beloved voice of the Penguins stepped aside this offseason after a legendary run that spanned five decades and featured all five Stanley Cup-clinching calls. The 32-year-old Getzoff will begin a new era in the Penguins radio booth — and he’ll do so with the Hall of Famer’s guidance and his blessing.
“What impressed me was his passion to want to be in the business,” Lange said. “That definitely stood out. He did it in a way that was kind of beyond his years. Right away, I knew that he was going to be really good. And he was.”
As Getzoff prepares to embrace the full 82-game grind and the next chapter for the Penguins Radio Network on 105.9 FM, here’s the story of how a kid from the Philadelphia suburbs found his calling, paid his dues and earned his place on the opposite side of the in-state rivalry.
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Growing up in Dresher, Pa. – a suburban community about 45 minutes north of Philadelphia – Getzoff’s hockey life began on the ice.
It didn’t start so great.
During a learn-to-skate program when he was about 2 or 3 years old, Getzoff screamed and cried hysterically. The incident was so bad that Getzoff’s parents said that if he ever wanted to get back on the ice, he’d have to beg them.
“I begged them,” Getzoff said. “I was probably 4 or 5. I never looked back.”
When he wasn’t playing on a team, the sports-obsessed kid was glued to the radio. In the summertime, he’d listen to the iconic Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas. In the winter, he tuned in to Flyers broadcaster Tim Saunders. And, occasionally, when the KDKA signal was strong enough on the other side of the state, Getzoff would sometimes dial up Lange calling the Penguins games.
“I found myself more drawn to the call than the moment itself,” Getzoff said. “There was no doubt when I was 12 years old, that’s what I wanted to do.”
Hockey and broadcasting became two fixtures of Getzoff’s life through high school, into college and even to this day, as he still skates in pick-up games.
At Upper Dublin High School, Getzoff founded a sports broadcasting club with two of his best friends, Stephen Watson and Alex Cohen. Today, they remain a tight-knit crew that’s continued to embrace their shared passion, as Watson works as a sports anchor at an ABC affiliate in Milwaukee and Cohen is the play-by-play voice of the Cubs’ Class AAA affiliate in Iowa.
Then at Ithaca College, Getzoff skated on the club team for two seasons, pursued a degree in broadcasting and met his wife, Maddie.
But as graduation neared, Getzoff soon realized that a diploma was only the start of an uphill climb in the competitive world of sports media. His first job out of school was at a small TV station in Elmira, N.Y., working as a tape operator — an unglamorous, pay-your-dues job with long hours and few frills.
“I was so eager to jump into the work force and jump into the media world of broadcasting, I took it,” Getzoff said.
A few months in the control room eventually led to some sports reporting assignments and then some on-camera work. Two years later, in 2013, Getzoff parlayed that experience into a job as the sports director at a TV station in Champaign, Ill.
Getzoff had never even visited the Midwest and didn’t know a soul in Illinois. But over time, he cut his teeth covering the Fighting Illini and other local sports. By 2015, he was recognized as the Illinois Sportscaster of the Year.
Still, the kid who cried on the ice all those years back searched for a way to get back into hockey. That’s when he found a job posting from the Penguins, who were looking for a jack-of-all-trades to fill a varied role that included pregame, postgame and intermission hosting.
When he applied for the job, Getzoff tried to camouflage his roots. In the job interview, they asked where he was from. The kid from Flyers country said, “Southeast Pa.”
The Penguins’ longtime vice president of communications, Tom McMillan, saw right through it and actually got a kick out of it. But McMillan also recognized a promising young voice who was passionate about hockey and ready to embrace a new team. He offered Getzoff the job.
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Inside the Penguins’ dressing room, Getzoff shook hands and made introductions during his first season in Pittsburgh in 2015. As he went locker-to-locker meeting the players at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, Lange extended his hand.
The veteran broadcaster asked the baby-faced Getzoff how old he was. Twenty-seven.
Lange thought for a minute.
“That’s how old I was when I came to Pittsburgh,” he said, with a laugh and a sly grin.
That moment still resonates with Getzoff to this day, almost as if Lange knew something then about the special connection they would eventually share in the broadcast booth.
As the months went by, Lange began passing along words of wisdom. That soon evolved into on-air chirps.
Once, Getzoff searched for a quiet place inside PPG Paints Arena to do a radio hit and found an unoccupied room in the bowels of the arena. When Lange spotted the young broadcaster in the so-called “Star Dressing Room,” he had a field day. The next day, he taped Getzoff’s name onto the door. That turned into a long-standing bit. Lange would joke on-air that Getzoff was pampering up in the “Star Dressing Room” ahead of the intermission report.
“I quickly realized that meant that he liked me,” Getzoff said.
While Lange joked with Getzoff, he also came to respect the passion and wor -ethic of the kid. One of Lange’s best-known one-liners is, “He beat him like a rented mule.” He began calling Getzoff “the mule” because of all the various tasks he did around the arena. He hosted the intermission shows. He appeared on PensTV. He wrote stories for the program. The job description seemingly grew by the game.
Still, Getzoff was hungry for more.
The summer following his first season, he approached his bosses with an idea that began his path to the play-by-play booth. Lange didn’t call the preseason games, and the Penguins always found someone to fill in.
“Give me one game,” Getzoff remembers saying.
The Penguins decided to give it a shot. Getzoff broadcast his first NHL preseason game in 2016 at Joe Lewis Arena in Detroit. From there, the ball was rolling.
Over the next several seasons, Lange dialed back his workload. First, Getzoff took a few road trips. That eventually evolved into the entire slate of road games alongside color commentator Phil Bourque. And then last season, as Lange chose to sit out due to the ongoing pandemic, Getzoff took yet another step toward the full-time role by adding home games to his schedule.
“One of Josh’s greatest strengths is he’s very chameleon-like,” Bourque said. “For Josh, he’s been preparing for this for a while. He’s known that Mikey has put his arm around him. He has done everything to make himself a really good broadcaster. He’s watched Mike’s work ethic, to be prepared for games and to be over-prepared.”
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An April 26, Josh and Maddie Getzoff welcomed their first child. They named him Gunnar.
When Lange heard the name, he couldn’t help but think back to old broadcaster who gave him the gift when his career began. And in a way, the young Gunnar gave Lange a gift, too, pulling him back into the booth for the first time since the pandemic began.
But after one last run while Getzoff was on paternity leave and then into the postseason, Lange decided it was time to pass the torch for good.
“I’m never going to look at it like I’m filling his shoes,” Getzoff said. “It’s an impossible mindset to have because it’s an impossible task. Mike is the voice of not just the Penguins, he’s one of the greatest voices in the history of the sports and the city of Pittsburgh.
“What I’m going to do is stand tall enough to fill my own shoes this season and beyond.”
Even as this new chapter begins, Getzoff will always have great appreciation for the man who gave his stamp of approval and helped put him in the chair. He plans to begin every broadcast at PPG Paints Arena by letting fans know he’s coming live from the “Mike Lange Media Level.”
And before every game, he’ll dig into his bag and pull out the old hourglass timer. As he flips it over the first time this season, it will signal a new beginning for the Penguins. Getzoff’s time has officially arrived.
Mike DeFabo: mdefabo@post-gazette.com and Twitter @MikeDeFabo.
First Published: October 4, 2021, 3:43 p.m.
Updated: October 4, 2021, 3:45 p.m.