Wrigleyville rooftop owners stopped just short of a lawsuit with complaints that video screens erected for Thursday's Winter Classic in the right and leftfield corners of Wrigley Field would obstruct the view of their own paying customers. Cubs chairman Crane Kenney confirmed that the longtime acrimony between the rooftop owners and the baseball team has spilled over into the hockey arena with threatening letters sent to the club objecting to the 16-by-14-foot screens. "They're not located to block the views of the rooftops," said NHL spokesman Frank Brown, "but out of respect to certain quirks in Wrigley's architecture. They're as out of the way as they can be." Kenney said that the rooftop owners were alerted in June of the possibility of signage or video screens being put up, which will allow the lower bowl fans at the Blackhawks- Detroit Red Wings game to see the puck, otherwise obscured by the boards. "This event fell in [the rooftop owners'] laps and they're upset it didn't fall in their laps as well as they had hoped," Kenney said.

Flames' forward Todd Bertuzzi, former NHL player Steve Moore, and their respective legal teams reportedly met Monday in Toronto in an effort to resolve an ongoing lawsuit. It was the players' first face-to-face meeting since March 8, 2004, when Bertuzzi sucker-punched Moore and drove his head into the ice during a game. Moore, who was with the Avalanche, suffered three fractured vertebrae in his neck, a concussion, and facial cuts, and has not played since.

Hubert ?Pit? Martin, a four-time All-Star in the 1960s and ?70s, has died after his snowmobile plunged into an icy lake, Quebec provincial police said. He was 64. Const. Marie-Josee Ouellet said Martin was driving the vehicle on Lake Kanasuta in northwestern Quebec on Sunday when the ice cracked and he plunged into the freezing water, according to an Associated Press report.