Bob Costas returned to the Cambria County War Memorial Arena on Tuesday, and this time didn’t have to run for his life.

Before hosting NBC Sports Network’s coverage of the Kraft Hockeyville USA game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning, Costas relived a moment that he feared he might not live through at the time.

He was the radio voice of the Syracuse Blazers and broadcasting a 1974 North American Hockey League playoff game against the Johnstown Jets.

As Costas tells it, “a fight takes place and it spills into the stands. Players are involved. Fans are involved.”

The officials cleared the ice in the middle of the second period and sent the players back to the locker rooms.

There would be no more hockey on this night.

Johnstown forfeited the March 30, 1974 game to go down 3-1 in the best-of-7 playoff series. The Blazers won the next night in Syracuse, 1-0, to eliminate the Jets.

“The fans spilled out into the corridor,” Costas says. “They’re banging on the door trying to break it down.”

Costas says he was later told that the Syracuse players were huddled in the locker room, sticks raised as clubs in case they would need to defend themselves – “like they’re on the ledge of the Alamo waiting for Santa Anna’s troops.”

He says: “However many might get through, the first several were really gonna get it.”

Eventually, Costas says, “additional cops show up with riot dogs and everything, and they disperse the crowd.”

The players made their way out to the bus, which has pulled up close to the War Memorial for a quick get-away.

“But they don’t tell the crowd that Johnstown has forfeited the game,” Costas says, because that “would only set them off again.”

Also, nobody tells the radio guy up in the press box.

“I’m filling and filling and filling (air time),” Costas says of his duties as the brawl is happening.

“They come to get me. I unplug everything. I’ve got wires dragging behind me and I jump on the bus.

“A few of the well-oiled fans are trying to rock the bus from side to side,” Costas says. “We inch our way out of the parking lot at about five miles per hour.

“Johnstown was in the rear-view mirror, and that was the last I saw of it …”

Until Monday night, when Costas arrived to cover Hockeyville.

He said he was surprised by the bright new lights in the arena.

“I remember it being dark, definitely feeling darker, which actually cast the rink in a more dramatic relief,” Costas says. “Then, it was like, ‘Something’s happening in the pit.'”

A brawl.

A forfeit.

And a future star broadcaster fleeing the War Memorial Arena – only to return and help that crazy town celebrate Hockeyville.