Continuing in our series about bygone hockey arenas, today I have stories about two Forums in which I did radio and television broadcasts.

MONTREAL FORUM

One of the most famous hockey arenas, and the one housing the most Stanley Cup Championships was the Montreal Forum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Built in 1924 at the corner of Atwater and St. Catherine Street, it was the home of the Montreal Canadiens from 1926 to 1996. It cost $1.5 million to build and in today’s money that would be $20 million. The final NHL game in the Forum was on March 11, 1996, as the Canadiens beat the Dallas Stars 4-1. In between the first and last games in the building 26 Stanley Cup Championships were won by the teams that played there, two by the Montreal Maroons and 24 by the Canadiens.

My memories of broadcasting Kings’ games in the Montreal Forum:

- The sense of history as you walked in to the main lobby. Photos of all the great Canadiens players hanging on the walls, Hall of Famers such as Jean Beliveau, Rocket Richard, Toe Blake, coach Dick Irvin, “Boom Boom” Geoffrion, Doug Harvey and others.

- The 24 Stanley Cup banners hanging from the rafters, more than any other building in the NHL.

- The steepness of the seats. In the eighth row of the lower red seats you were already above the glass.

- Like many old arenas there was not a decent press box for radio and TV since the building was built before television existed. However, we did have a magnificent view of the game, with a steep angle and close to the ice. We also did not have a television studio for pre and post game shows like we have today. In fact our “studio” was in the garage area of the arena with fumes from automobiles and the zamboni.

- We would do between period interviews on the ice. Rich Marotta was my partner in the mid-70′s and one night he went down to the ice surface to interview Bob Gainey of Montreal. We discovered that Rich’s microphone would not work, so they told me to go on camera and fill the time. The score was only 1-0 so there wasn’t a lot to talk about and I was by myself with no one to interview. I filled for about 5 minutes and felt I was doing a wonderful job, when finally Rich’s mic was working and I threw down to him. The phone rang in our booth and it was someone from Los Angeles who told me Kings owner Jack Kent Cooke had called. I thought he called to congratulate me on the job I did filling the time, but he said to tell me to ‘Quit hogging the mike and let Rich talk once in a while.’

- The spine-tingling rendition of O’ Canada by Roget Doucet who sang the national anthems in the Forum in the 70′s.

- Watching and describing thrilling rushes up the ice by Guy LaFleur, Yvan Cournoyer and Steve Shutt.

- The Kings Stanley Cup Final series vs. Montreal in 1993 and Marty McSorley’s infamous illegal stick in Game 2. Montreal won Game 5 by a score of 4-1 to win their 24th and last Stanley Cup to this date.

Today a portion of the old Forum still stands but inside has been converted to restaurants and movie theatres, but no amount of renovation can erase the great memories of one of the greatest shrines of hockey.

THE FABULOUS FORUM

In my opinion the most distinctive and beautiful Forum was the home of the Los Angeles Kings from 1967 to 1999. It was built for the sum of $16 million and that included the land, and it was designed in a circular “Roman Forum” design that was so distinctive that when you saw a photo of it you knew immediately that it was the Forum in Inglewood, California. Owner Jack Kent Cooke demanded that we call it the “Fabulous Forum.” The name changed in December of 1988 when then owner Dr. Jerry Buss sold the naming rights to Great Western Savings and Loan. That was the first naming rights deal in American sports at that time and the building became known as “The Great Western Forum.”

I broadcast Kings’ games in that building from 1973 to 1999 before the Kings moved to STAPLES Center. I have so many remembrances from that building that I could not list them all in this space. Some of them include:

- The availability to visit with fans in what was a somewhat intimate setting compared with the huge arenas today.

- The lack of a “formal” press box. Apparently the architect, who also designed the current Madison Square Garden in New York, forgot there “might” be media coverage in the two largest markets in the U.S.

- Therefore, the “Press Box” took up several rows of seats in the front rows of the colonnade at center ice. It had a decent view of the game but there were times that fans in the lower bowl would stand and block our view and that of the TV cameras. The biggest problem I had was with the “cotton candy man” when he had a full pallet and would stop in front of me so I had to look around the cotton candy to describe the play.

- The accessibility fans had to the broadcast location. One night while I was doing the play-by-play, I felt a tap on my shoulder and a Kings’ fans said, ‘Hey, Bob, I want to ask you a question.’ Needless to say I was a little busy at the time.

- The 1981 All-Star Game which featured the Kings’ Triple Crown line of Marcel Dionne, Dave Taylor and Charlie Simmer, all introduced together to the crowd. Kings goalie Mario Lessard was also on that All-Star team.

- The 1993 Stanley Cup Final when the Kings met the Montreal Canadiens. Before the Kings first home game in that series, I saw fans toasting each other with champagne in their seats, finally seeing something they had never seen before in the Forum.

- The “Miracle on Manchester” playoff game on April 10, 1982, against the powerful Edmonton Oilers. The underdog Kings trailed 5-0 at the end of two periods but rallied with five goals in the third period, the tying goal by Steve Bozek with five seconds left. In overtime the Kings won the game on a blistering shot by Daryl Evans for a 6-5 win and the Kings went on to win the series.

- Wayne Gretzky’s first regular season game in a Kings uniform (October 6, 1988). He scored on his first shot in an 8-2 win over Detroit.

Of course there were so many others but time and space here doesn’t permit.

The final game in the Great Western Forum was on April 18, 1999. Thousands of Kings’ fans still have extremely fond memories of the “Fabulous Forum.”

Even the Leaves will be able to lay a beat down on Illach's boys.

Torontonians return to the ticket windows like trained pigs every year, no matter how terrible the Maple Leafs are, how much they charge for a seat and a beer and a hot dog, how many generations go by without any real sense of something good in the offing....

A fourth straight day of bargaining between the N.H.L. and the players’ association began Friday morning at the Eighth Avenue offices of Proskauer Rose, the Manhattan law firm that advises the league on labor matters.

But while the continued talks are a sign of progress, Donald Fehr, the union’s executive director, said in an internal memo that big differences still separated the two sides.

“While a step forward, a significant gap remains,” Fehr said in the memo, which became public Friday.

He outlined the league’s response to a union proposal made in Wednesday’s bargaining session.

“We were told that the owners want an ‘immediate reset’ to 50-50,” Fehr said.

The union, by contrast, has offered to lower the players’ overall share of revenue to 50 percent by the third year of a new contract. The union’s gradual dropdown from the players’ previous share of 57 percent was aimed at enabling owners to honor existing contracts for at least two years.

Fehr said the owners’ immediate reset to 50 percent, along with several proposed provisions on arbitration, free-agency eligibility and contract term limits, “would significantly reduce a player’s bargaining power and give the owner much more leverage over a player for most if not all of his career.”

Fehr’s memo tempered some of the optimism observers felt after Thursday’s session.

“In short, the concessions on future salary we have offered (at least $948 million to $1.25 billion over five years, depending on H.R.R. growth) are not enough,” Fehr said in the memo, using the abbreviation for hockey-related revenue. “We are still being told that more salaries must be conceded, and that very valuable player contracting rights must be surrendered. So, while we are meeting again, and while some steps are being taken, there is still a lot of work to be done and bridges to be crossed before an agreement can be made.”

The union described the morning meeting as one of a couple of sessions set for Friday, as the talks between the two sides intensified on Day 55 of the lockout.

Players’ association officials said privately that the league also responded Thursday to a union offer on revenue-sharing between clubs. Last season wealthier N.H.L. clubs paid $150 million in revenue-sharing to poorer clubs. The union wants that figure raised to $260 million, with a large portion of that money earmarked for the six teams chronically in the deepest debt: the Islanders, the Phoenix Coyotes, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Florida Panthers, the Nashville Predators and the Carolina Hurricanes.

The league has offered $200 million in revenue-sharing, although it may have gone higher in this week’s bargaining.

Fehr said Thursday that talks could extend into the weekend, if necessary. But league and union officials are expected to go to Toronto for Monday’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony for Pavel Bure, Adam Oates, Joe Sakic and Mats Sundin. Negotiations could continue in Toronto.

The use of Proskauer’s offices for this week’s talks had been a closely guarded secret until reporters figured it out Thursday.

Proskauer is a something of an odd choice for the negotiations, given the law firm’s guidance to the N.H.L. in three lockouts since Bettman, a former Proskauer lawyer, became commissioner in 1993.

Robert Batterman, a partner at the firm who has been a key adviser for the N.H.L. and N.F.L., said in January that “the pendulum has swung too far toward the employees” in labor matters and that “employers are using lockouts because unions are reluctant to do what the employers consider reasonable.”

In an October interview Fehr said Batterman was “obviously right that employers are using the lockout more often” and that “Bob has been the architect of a whole host of those, so I assume that’s the advice he’s giving them.”

A union spokesman, Jonathan Weatherdon, dismissed the idea that there was awkwardness resulting from negotiating at the firm.

“Being at Proskauer doesn’t matter to us,” he said. “They have a good cafeteria.”

In the 2004-5 N.H.L. lockout that canceled the entire season, league and union negotiators used the Midtown offices of Skadden Arps, another law firm that advises the league, though not on labor matters.

After Bettman canceled that season and the lockout threatened to drag into a second season, the N.H.L. and the players’ association met in a set of conference rooms for several marathon sessions in May and June 2005. There they hammered out the details of the league’s first salary cap and various player contracting rules, which went into effect when the settlement was announced on July 13, 2005.

That agreement remained in place until it expired Sept. 15, then Bettman imposed the latest lockout.

The absence of Canada's national sport has particularly hurt sales of Coors Light and Molson Canadian. Swinburn said the company will seek compensation from the league once the labor dispute ends.

After a week of negotiations, the N.H.L. and its players association have drawn close to agreement on several key issues, remaining far apart in only one main area: players' contract rights.

That area remains thorny and could delay an end to the N.H.L. lockout, which reached its 57th day Sunday and concluded with gloomy news briefings from Bill Daly, the N.H.L. deputy commissioner, and Donald Fehr, the union's executive director. The sides remain divided over when players can become eligible for free agency, among other contract issues.

But the two sides have made far more progress toward ending the lockout than is widely believed, according to a member of the union delegation who has attended the talks.

"We're basically there" in several areas, according to the union delegate, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.

Fehr and Commissioner Gary Bettman met Sunday afternoon at the N.H.L. office in New York along with their deputies for less than two hours of discussions on contract rights. Afterward, the two delegations broke to leave for Toronto and Monday's Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Daly told reporters that "contract rights issues are very important to the clubs" and that because of the wide gulf between the two sides on those issues, "I don't know where to go."

Fehr said he did not "see a path to an agreement" on contract rights.

But lost amid the gloom is the progress the league and union have made in six straight days of talks. They are fairly close on the critical issue of honoring existing contracts, according to the union delegate.

The issue of finding a way to pay players with existing contracts in full under a lower salary cap - or settling on a "make whole" provision, in the language of the negotiations - had been a stumbling block in previous weeks. But by Sunday, the two sides were $2 million to $3 million apart per team, per year, an amount the delegate described as "within spitting distance."

The league and union are even closer to agreement on revenue sharing among clubs, with a plan described as basically done except for administrative details. The system will be significantly expanded compared with the N.H.L.'s current system, with more teams qualifying for revenue sharing and more money distributed.

The system will include a small fund, similar to baseball's industry growth fund, that Bettman can specially earmark for the neediest franchises - presumably teams like Phoenix, the Islanders, Columbus and Florida.

But big obstacles remain on the issue of contract rights.

Under the collective bargaining agreement that expired Sept. 15, players whose contracts had expired were eligible for free agency if they were 27 or had seven years of N.H.L. service. The league is seeking to raise those thresholds to 28 and eight years of experience.

The league is also seeking to restrict players' rights to go to salary arbitration, and to limit the term of contracts to five years. Under the previous system, there were no limits.

The union delegate characterized the league's stance on player contract issues as "very draconian" and said, "We're very, very far apart" in that area.

According to published reports, confirmed by those present at Friday's bargaining session, Bettman told Fehr that no deal was possible unless the union agreed to all of the league's proposed changes to player contract rights.

"The owners made it clear that there is no give with respect to any of their proposals," Fehr told reporters after Sunday's meeting. "That unless players are prepared to take - and this is my phrase, not theirs - down to the comma, that there's nothing to do."

But the union delegate also stressed the "very professional" tenor of the negotiations on both sides.

Reports emerged Friday of a shouting match between players and owners at the end of that day's meeting. But the delegate said the exchange was "extremely brief" and stood out only because of its rarity.

The exchange was between the free-agent defenseman Chris Campoli and Winnipeg defenseman Ron Hainsey on one side, and the owners Murray Edwards of Calgary and Craig Leipold of Minnesota on the other.

The delegate called descriptions of the incident a "major exaggeration."

"No one would have noticed it but for the fact that these meetings are very, very professional - no one even raises their voice," he said.