NEW YORK - The NHL is about to find out if it was missed.

Rebounding from an entire season lost to a lockout, hockey players and owners reached a long-awaited agreement Wednesday that almost ensures the NHL will be back on the ice in the fall.

It's not the deal players' association executive director Bob Goodenow wanted when he took on this fight, but the union is expected to approve it.

"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."

It took an all-night bargaining session after weeks of intense negotiating to hammer out the tentative deal, one expected to include a hard salary cap linked to league-wide revenues.

Exactly the "cost certainty" commissioner Gary Bettman promised to team owners.

"What we went through was necessary," Carolina Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford said. "We had to get some controls on our business and certainly I'm hoping that's what this agreement does."

The six-year pact still needs to be ratified by both sides, and details won't be released until then. 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.

The last round of negotiations began Tuesday at noon and culminated about 24 hours later with a joint news release announcing the deal. Once everyone signs off on it, the league can begin the difficult task of gaining public support. No matter who won or lost, the fight was costly.

"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.

"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, Bettman canceled the season, making the NHL the first North American sports league to lose a year to a labor dispute. There is no way yet 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."

If all goes according to plan, a scaled-down draft is expected to be held later this month and training camps will open in September from Vancouver to Miami. NHL games will be back on the schedule in October.

Selling the sport might take a while longer.

During the lockout, disgruntled Buffalo fan Doug Sitler sold more than 15,000 magnetic car ribbons that read: "I need my hockey fix(ed)."

"I think it's going to take a little bit of time for people to get back in the swing of things," he said. "But sports fans are pretty fickle. They have short memories. They really do."

The sides met for 10 straight days in New York, and it became clear Wednesday morning - the 301st day of the lockout - that they weren't going to leave the room without an agreement.

The expected salary cap - the first in league history - likely will have a ceiling of $39 million and a minimum around $22 million.

Player salaries will not exceed 54 percent of league-wide revenues, expected to be around $1.8 billion. Players also will put money into escrow. After each season, that will be used to balance out the set percentage based on actual revenues.

Look for extensive revenue sharing in the new deal, changes in entry-level contracts, and modified free agency that allows players the freedom to move before they are 31.

When the league re-launches, it will do so with a new salary structure that keeps high-spending teams such as Detroit, Toronto, Philadelphia and the New York Rangers in check.

The first order of business after ratification will be to get a majority of the players signed. The belief is that last season's contracts will be wiped from the books, leaving many players without deals.

Those who are still under contract will have their salaries reduced by 24 percent, a concept first proposed by the union last December. Some high-priced players will also be on the market as teams pare payrolls to get down to the cap.

There will also be rules changes, some that could include reducing the size of goaltender equipment, and the addition of a shootout to eliminate tie games.

"Our focus right now, from the coaches standpoint, is we're waiting to see what our roster is going to look like and what the playing rules are going to look like," Philadelphia Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock said.

The draft was supposed to be held last month in Ottawa, and the Canadian capital might get to host the event soon.

NBC will start its two-year television deal a year late, but the NHL still needs to find a cable partner.

The labor deal came down during sport's biggest lull of the year - the baseball All-Star break. The NHL probably won't hold such an event until 2007 as next year's All-Star game is expected to be replaced by an Olympic break, allowing for players to represent their countries in Turin, Italy.