Sam Rosen expecting emotional farewell as his time in the Rangers' TV booth winds down
New York Rangers play-by-play announcer Sam Rosen in the MSG Networks broadcast booth at Madison Square Garden on Jan. 23, 2025. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
This one has lasted most of a lifetime.
But soon Sam Rosen will turn in his microphone after 40 years as the Rangers’ lead TV play-by-play voice.
“I know that the realization there are no more games after this will hit, and it’ll be emotional,” he told Newsday in a recent interview. “I think I’m prepared for that. But how can you not be emotional?
“This has been my life for well over 40 years, and I love it. I still love it, but it is going to come to an end.”
In the meantime, he is being celebrated across the NHL.
From Toronto to Montreal to Tampa to Las Vegas and even Philadelphia, Rosen has been feted by everyone from team officials to fans of Rangers rivals.
His face has turned up on video boards and gifts have shown up in his TV booth. The Flyers gave him a brick from the old Spectrum.
“Work-wise, this has been like any other season,” he said. “The only difference is that wherever we go, people acknowledge that this is my last year . . . It’s been tremendously heartwarming.”
Rosen, 77, announced before the season that he would retire from MSG Networks at its conclusion, so he knew there would be a farewell tour of sorts. It has exceeded his expectations.
But the biggest celebration is to come, when the home fans say their goodbyes sometime this spring, pending the Rangers’ playoff status.
Rosen had many other local and national jobs before and during his Rangers run, but his closest association always will be with the Blueshirts. He took over that role from a mentor, Jim Gordon, in 1984-85 and has been on the job since.
That has meant interacting not only with multiple generations of Rangers fans but with generations of players.
“The thing that sticks out for me most about Sam was his passion for the game and how much he cared about the team,” Mark Messier, captain of the 1993-94 Stanley Cup winners, told Newsday.
“He had a job to do. He had to be honest. I think the fans respected him for how much he wanted the team to win, but also riding that fine line of professionalism and journalism where you’ve got to be honest with your assessment.”
Messier added, “To me, Sam and J.D. [analyst John Davidson] were a massive part of that [1993-94] team that year.”
That Cup run ended with a Game 7 victory over the Canucks at Madison Square Garden that Rosen punctuated with the most memorable call of his career:
“The waiting is over! The New York Rangers are the Stanley Cup champions! And this one will last a lifetime!"
“The best thing about it is that it was unrehearsed,” Rosen said. “It's not something you plan to say.”
He said that with the Rangers up three games to one in the Stanley Cup Final, he was looking in the mirror while shaving trying to come up with a line should the Rangers win Game 5.
They did not. Then they lost Game 6. By Game 7, Rosen decided to ad lib. “It just came out,” he said.
Sam Rosen and John Davidson at the 25th anniversary ceremony for the 1994 Rangers Stanley Cup winning team. Credit: Getty Images/Bruce Bennett
Rosen and Davidson started out covering the Rangers’ victory parade from the MSG studios. But as a surprise, a police escort was summoned to bring them from there to lower Manhattan to join the victory rally at City Hall.
“The best thing, to this day,” Messier said, “was when they were sitting on the broadcast, MSG showing the parade, and they came and got them and drove them down to the area. That epitomizes the value they had for us and how we thought of them.”
Rosen did not expect a lifetime of more than 30 years to pass without another Cup. But his excitement for the games — in good times and bad — has not ebbed.
“He’s the same every game,” said Joe Micheletti, his current analyst. “It’s not pretense. It’s a genuine love of the sport, and love of what he does.”
Micheletti said that before every game, as the producer counts down to going on the air, Rosen pumps his fist to indicate he is ready to go.
“That's him,” Micheletti said. “He’s the same every game. Can’t wait to do it, and away we go.”
The Rangers will honor Rosen before their March 22 game against the Canucks. MSG Networks will present a weeklong tribute to the broadcaster starting on March 16 and culiminating in the ceremony at the Garden.
When John Sterling retired from calling Yankees games last year, he said the games were the easy part; it was the rest of it that caught up with him.
“I agree with him 100%,” Rosen said. “The travel gets more tedious, the packing to go on the road for a week. But once you’re doing the game, it’s great . . . It still is special.”
Rosen was born in Ulm, Germany, to Polish parents who fled to Russia before World War II, then to Germany soon after the conflict.
"It sounds bizarre, but that was the safest place," he said of post-war Germany in a 2013 interview with Newsday.
He was 2 when he moved to Brooklyn and became an avid Yankees fan — and a fan of announcer Mel Allen.
"I listened to radio non-stop," he said. "My parents with their European Jewish background wanted me to be a doctor or lawyer. I took a semester of science courses and after a bunch of Cs, I said, 'This is not for me.' "
He began working at WINS radio while attending City College. During the Knicks’ 1969-70 championship season, he did halftime and postgame reports for their radio network.
He got his first full-time job at MSG in 1982 and two years later was assigned to be the Rangers’ lead announcer, succeeding Gordon.
“Jim was a prideful man,” Rosen said. “They offered him a different role and he wouldn't accept it because it hurt him. They came to me and they said, ‘Look, we're going to make a change, and if it's not you, it's going to be someone else.’ ”
Rosen has had only three lead analyst partners: Phil Esposito, Davidson and Micheletti.
“First and foremost to me is the human being and who he is and how he acts and how he treats people and the friendships he has,” Micheletti said. “That’s the first thing that stood out to me, from Day One.”
Rangers broadcasters Sam Rosen and Joe Micheletti get a shoe shine inside the Verizon Center prior to Rangers vs. Capitals in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals on April 15, 2011. Credit: Getty Images/Bruce Bennett
Sam Rosen and Joe Micheletti in the MSG Networks' Rangers booth on Jan. 23, 2025. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Said Davidson: “I've said this before, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart: I think he's a New York legend. He's an institution. And it's not just calling Ranger games or other sports that he did in the past.
“It's what he does to make where he is a better place. He's constantly out there doing benefits. He doesn't ask for anything in return. Never has. He’s made New York a better place as best he could.”
Rosen is widely admired in the broader circle of New York sports announcers, too.
“He’s a guy with no ego,” retired announcer Spencer Ross said. “I can't speak for him, but I will: He’s a guy who wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Ain’t I a lucky guy? It’s a power-play goal! It’s a power-play goal!’ He’s just a really special guy.”
Power-play goals by the Rangers will not be the same absent Rosen’s signature line. (Kenny Albert, the Rangers’ radio play-by-play man, is the heavy favorite to succeed him.)
But Rosen has no regrets about his decision. For now, he is soaking up the love and reflecting it back.
“Ranger fans are number one,” he said. “They're loyal to the nth degree and they travel well, so wherever we go, there are Ranger fans . . . There's an appreciation there that you've touched people's lives.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
