Hello, everyone. I'm Matt Williamson at Williamson NFL. Give me a follow over there in the X.

Go check out my YouTube page, all that good stuff. But let's start today's show. We'll get the

Steelers here in a minute, but I'm going to start today's show. A little different. This is a

Pittsburgh Sports podcast website, obviously. But the passing of Mike Lang is a big one for me.

I don't follow the hockey or the pens nearly as much as I used to. I'm 51 years old.

I'm recording this on Thursday. This is the first time I've had a chance to chat with you guys.

But that's a big one.

I mean, to me, that is a true Pittsburgh Stan Savarin like legend.

You know what I mean?

Like just an all-time great that shaped a lot of our views and influenced our life quite a bit.

And I never knew Mike Lang, you know, doing this for my job. I didn't

intersect with him. But being born in 1973, much of my childhood, the pens were horrendous.

I mean, once in a while, we'd go to a game and it'd be like two bucks and you could sit

basically on the ice and go sit wherever

you want, you know. But then this Lemieux guy gets drafted and he's my all-time favorite

athlete ever. I mean, think about the year, I mean, Lemieux gets drafted in the mid-80s. I'm 12,

13 years old. And all of a sudden, we're like, what's this hockey stuff? You know? And before you know it, me and all my buddies are playing street hockey after school every day, listening, you know, I walk to school. I would, my best bud and I would meet in the park and walk to school and be like, man, you see Lemieux had a hat trick last night. He had five points last night.

And then soon as school was over, we'd run to the street hockey courts and play until dark or later, you know.

And that was all because of Lemieux.

But obviously, Lang had so much to do with that, you know.

And if you think about it, just with my age, perfect time for Lemieux and the Penns to be good, listening on the radio at night in my bed. You know, I mean, like there was no internet. I mean, a few young pups. I mean, times were different back then. We weren't texting each other. We didn't have cell phones.

You'd watch every game as much as you possibly could.

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