updated 7:27 p.m. ET July 13, 2005

NEW YORK - Open the arenas, break out the skates and fire up the Zamboni.

The NHL is back.

After losing an entire season to a lockout, players and owners ended an all-night bargaining session Wednesday by reaching their goal: a tentative deal, expected to include a salary cap, that virtually ensures hockey will return this fall.

The six-year pact still needs to be ratified by both sides. The players’ association has scheduled a members meeting in Toronto next week, while the NHL board of governors plans to gather next Thursday in New York for a vote.

“It’s a new day,” Philadelphia Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock said. “It’s pretty exciting.”

And about time.

“At the end of the day everybody lost,” said Wayne Gretzky, the NHL’s career scoring leader and the managing partner of the Phoenix Coyotes. “We almost crippled our industry. It was very disappointing what happened.”

The last round of negotiations began Tuesday at noon and culminated around noon Wednesday with a joint news release announcing the deal.

Though details won’t be released until both sides approve it, a salary cap would be something players’ union executive director Bob Goodenow never wanted.

Once everyone signs off on the deal, the league can begin the difficult task of gaining public support. No matter who won or lost, the fight cost the NHL a full season.

“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.

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“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.”

This lockout was worse than any in sports, dwarfing the one that cut the 1994-95 hockey season nearly in half and resulted in the agreement that expired last September.

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.

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“I don’t want to get to the relief point yet until everything’s finalized,” said Carolina Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford, a former goalie. “What we went through was necessary. We had to get some controls on our business and certainly I’m hoping that’s what this new agreement does.”

Although 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 United States.

“That’s going to be our next big step — winning back the fans,” said Nashville Predators forward Jim McKenzie, a 15-year NHL veteran. “We’ll have our work cut out for us.”

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