Al Trautwig dies at 68, longtime host of Rangers broadcasts on MSG Networks including 1994 Stanley Cup
Al Trautwig, a longtime host of New York Rangers pregame and postgame shows during three decades with MSG Networks, has died at age 68.
His former MSG Networks teammate, Alan Hahn, was the first to reveal the news.
“[Trautwig] was not only a friend, but a mentor and a teacher,” Hahn wrote. “He was, personally, one of my biggest resources of support when I moved into this career.”
No cause of death was disclosed. Trautwig said in an interview with Newsday last year that he had undergone cancer treatment, though he did not say what type of cancer it had been. He did say he had been “cleared, and now it is just a matter of getting better.”
Trautwig last appeared on MSG back in 2019 when he took a leave of absence after he was diagnosed with cancer. MSG opted not to renew his contract in 2021. Following his departure from the network, Trautwig spent time teaching at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York.
Over the course of his career, Trautwig won four national Emmy Awards, 28 New York Emmys and a New York State Sportscaster of the Year Award. But Rangers fans know him best for his time hosting pregame and postgame shows on MSG, where he started in 1989.
His time at MSG included covering the Rangers run to the Stanley Cup in 1994, and for years he was the first voice their fans would hear when they tuned in for a game telecast and the last face they saw before the telecast concluded.
Trautwig, a Long Island native who covered 16 Olympic games for NBC, ABC and CBS, was a stick boy for the New York Islanders in their early years and a ball boy for the New York (now Brooklyn) Nets during their time in the American Basketball Association. He began his broadcasting career calling New York Apollo soccer games in 1978 for Adelphi’s student-run radio station WBAU before broadcasting their matches on WMCA radio after graduating.
He handled NHL play-by-play on USA Network broadcasts in the 1980s. Although rooted in New York, Trautwig spent enough time on the national stage to be cast in the 1993 Disney movie “Cool Runnings” as a sportscaster narrating the feats of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Calgary Olympics.
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Former Rangers studio host Al Trautwig ‘lived and breathed’ New York sports
Trautwig was remembered by former co-workers and members of the media after word sperad about his passing.
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