NHL RETURNS! Deal Struck Sunday Ends Lockout

After four bitter months and with more then half the season already canceled the NHL will finally return to the ice after the players union and the leagues owners came to an agreement on a 10-year deal early Sunday morning.

The deal, which seems to heavily favor the owners, especially those who complained about unfair competition in the league based on player compensations, is going to see some big changes.

The Pension Plan is going to see players hockey related income drop from 57% earned income to a 50-50 split with the owners, thus giving owners more leverage. Earlier in negotiations the owners wanted to bring the players down to 46% of income revenue, but came back to 50% in recent talks.

The players share of hockey-related income reached $3.3 billion during the 2011-2012 season. Now one can understand why the players were in a fight to keep their compensation, and why a season was almost lost.

Also the salary cap max for teams is going to come skyrocketing down over the course of the deal. The 2013 season will see a salary cap of $70.2 million. That will go down further in 2013-2014 with a salary cap of $64 million.

"All clubs must have a minimum payroll of $44 million.

"The league had wanted next season's cap to fall to $60 million, but agreed to an upper limit of $64.3 - the same amount as last season.

"Inside individual player contracts, the salary can't vary more than 35 percent year to year, and the final year can't be more than 50 percent of the highest year," (FOX SPORTS).

(Yes, the Minnesota Wild who gave a combined $196 million to Zach Parise and Ryan Suter before the lockout are sweating).

While both commissioner Gary Bettman and Players Association director Donald Fehr (no stranger to canceling seasons; Google 1994 MLB lockout) will be looked at as the villains of this mess, the credit for getting this deal done belongs to federal mediator Scott Beckenbaugh, who brought both sides back to the table in the most crucial junction of lockout. If the two sides failed to come to an agreement this weekend the season almost certainly would have been lost for the second time in eight years.

Even though hockey is back, the NHL will once again struggle to gain notoriety among fans. With the NBA season is full tilt and the NFL playoffs well underway, people will forget about hockey. In fact with the NHL opening their season now, nobody will even notice.  Bettman has seen three lockouts under his watch, and lost one season in 2004-2005. He almost lost this one too. The NHL will have to have a incredible 45-50 game regular season in order to draw the attention of both die-hard and casual fans alike.

Either way, it will be dubious that the NHL can replicate the kind of fanfare it earned last spring when both New York and Los Angeles had a total of three teams play deep into the Stanley Cup playoffs.