The NHL and the players' association reached an agreement in principle on a six-year labor deal on Wednesday, ending a lockout that wiped out the last ice hockey season.
The sides met for 24 hours starting on Tuesday to hammer out the collective bargaining agreement that will return the NHL to the ice on time in the autumn. In February, commissioner Gary Bettman canceled the season, making the NHL the first North American sports league to lose a year because of a labor dispute.
"It's a new day. It's pretty exciting," Philadelphia Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock told reporters.
Both sides still need to ratify the deal, a pact that is expected to contain a salary cap -- something players' association executive director Bob Goodenow never wanted. That process is expected to be completed next week, the league and the union said in a joint news release.
"To be totally honest, I really don't care what the deal is anymore. All I care about is getting the game back on the ice," Flyers star Jeremy Roenick said in a telephone interview during a celebrity golf event in Nevada.
"I think the deal is not great for the players. It is definitely an owner-friendly deal. For the last 10 years, the players have made a lot of money and now we are in a position where everybody is going to make money," he said.
"Unfortunately, it had to take a whole year to get to a point where we could have been last year," Roenick said.
While the NHL seems to have gotten what it wanted, there is no way to measure the damage done to a sport that already was the least popular of the four major leagues in the US.
If all goes according to plan, a scaled-down draft is expected to be held this month, and training camps will open from Vancouver to Miami in September. Real NHL games will be back on the schedule come October.
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