After four months of rancor, threats and mistrust, the N.H.L. commissioner and the head of the players union stood side by side Sunday morning for the first time since the lockout began, a picture of amity and cooperation.
"Don Fehr and I are here to tell you that we have reached an agreement on a framework for a new collective bargaining agreement," Commissioner Gary Bettman said. "We still have more work to do, but it's good to be at this point."
Bettman was speaking at 5:30 a.m. Sunday, shortly after a 16-hour bargaining session that brought an end to the often bitter N.H.L. lockout in its 113th day.
"Hopefully within a very few days, the fans can get back to watching people who are skating, not the two of us," said Donald Fehr, the union's executive director.
The N.H.L. board of governors was expected to meet in New York by Tuesday to vote on the deal ahead of a possible start of training camps Wednesday. Players are also expected to ratify the agreement.
Under the quickest timetable, a regular season of 48 to 50 games could begin by Jan. 15. But ratifications, paperwork and the players' desire to have one exhibition game could push that back a few days.
In interviews, union officials and players provided some details of the tentative settlement.
The agreement will be for 10 years, and either side can opt out after 8. The salary cap for the 2013-14 season would drop from $70.2 million in 2012-13 to $64.3 million. Each team will be allowed two contract buyouts to get under the lowered cap.
Individual player contracts will be limited to seven years, or eight if a club is re-signing a player, marking the first time that N.H.L. contract lengths will be limited.
To prevent contracts that try to circumvent the salary cap, no player's salary can change by more than 35 percent from one year to the next, and the highest-paid year of the contract must be within 50 percent of the lowest-paid year.
When the lockout began Sept. 15, Bettman said it was so that N.H.L. owners could get the same kind of deal the N.F.L. and N.B.A. owners were able to get after lockouts in 2011. Those leagues, and now the N.H.L., have reduced their players' share of revenues from 57 percent to about 50 percent.
Scot L. Beckenbaugh, deputy director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, emerged as a crucial player in ending the lockout.
Saturday's negotiations went on as players voted to allow Fehr to dissolve the union if the talks stalled. Exercising that option would have probably ended the bargaining and pushed the proceedings into court.
But hopes of a settlement rose as negotiations went into the early hours Sunday morning.
Beckenbaugh spent 12 hours Friday shuttling between the N.H.L. office in Midtown Manhattan and the union's hotel two blocks away. Finally he determined that it would be worthwhile to bring the sides together for a bargaining session, which began at 1:15 p.m. Saturday at the union's hotel and turned out to be by far the longest since the lockout began.
Beckenbaugh, 59, worked more than 30 hours on Friday, Saturday and Sunday to bring the sides back together and keep them focused on the issues.
When the session began Saturday afternoon in the ballroom of the Sofitel hotel on West 44th Street, there was a sense that the talks could just as easily blow up as lead to a settlement. As the talks were going on, the union voted overwhelmingly to give Fehr authorization to walk away from the table, dissolve the union and send everything to the courts. Such was the level of distrust between the players and the league.
Instead Bettman and Fehr came to a deal. Tired but pleased, they faced reporters Sunday morning, announced the settlement and walked away.
Fehr then turned to Bettman, patted him on the shoulder and said, "That was painless."
Hardly. The league was a growing $3.3 billion business in 2011-12, but the lockout cost almost half a season, alienated fans and sponsors and, according to Bettman's estimate, cost $18 million to $20 million a day in lost revenue.
However relieved both sides were to reach an agreement, it came at a cost.
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