The extended sports family in Pittsburgh has suffered a loss this week.
Stan Savran, who served as a longtime broadcaster for both the Pittsburgh Penguins as well as Major League Baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates, has passed away at the age of 76 after a battle with lung cancer.
Almost immediately, tributes began to pour in.
The Penguins released the following statement:
"Stan Savran, Pittsburgh broadcasting legend, delivered some of the best announcements in Penguins history. He was a friend and a true professional at his craft. As long-time listeners, who loved the show, we will miss you, Stan."
From Sidney Crosby:
"Stan was so welcoming to be when I came to Pittsburgh. He was always a class act and kind to everyone he interacted with. We'll definitely miss his passion for all sports and everything Pittsburgh!"
Additional tributes:
“As a college-aged fan when Stan first came to Pittsburgh, he was the first guy in Pittsburgh media who you could listen to and talk about hockey,” said Tom McMillan, formerly the Penguins vice president of communications as well as a beat writer for the team throughout the 1980s and 1990s. “The Penguins, obviously, weren’t big in the 1970s. There wasn’t any hockey talk. It just didn’t exist. Stan was the first guy who talked about it. He didn’t really know much about it — he was learning about it along the way — but he took it seriously. He was the first oasis, kind of, for hockey fans well before the Penguins were big in town and well before Mario.
“The one thing that I can guarantee you’ll hear from everybody, every player — at least in our locker room — was that we all liked Stan,” said former Penguins forward Phil Bourque, who is now a team broadcaster. “Never a bad word about Stan. That kind of led you to trust him because you liked him and you saw the way he went about his business.
“There was a consistency to his personality, just him as a person, or the consistency to the way he went about his business. If he came over to talk to you, whether it was off the record or on the record, you knew that you trusted him. Things that you told him, there was a filter there.”
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