Following a marathon 16-plus hour negotiation session, the National Hockey League and the Players Association reached a tentative deal early Sunday morning to end the 113-day NHL lockout.
“We have reached an agreement on the framework of a new collective bargaining agreement, the details of which need to be put to paper,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters, according to a video on the NHL website.
“We’ve got to dot a lot of I’s and cross a lot of t’s. There’s still a lot of work to be done but the basic framework of the deal has been agreed upon.”
Before the collective bargaining agreement is completed, it still needs to be finalized by both sides and ratified by the NHL board of governors as well as the Players Association membership.
“We have a framework of a deal, we have to do the legal work, we have to do the constituent communication work. … We need to let them know the details before we tell all of you,” NHLPA executive director Don Fehr told reporters.
“But having said that hopefully we’re at a place where all of those things will proceed fairly rapidly and with some dispatch, and we'll get back to what we used to call business as usual just as fast as we can,” Fehr said.
The NHL still has not announced the start date of the season or the number of games each team will play.
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