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 yesterday 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.

“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 yesterday 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. “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.”

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.

While 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.

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.

The expected salary cap likely will have a ceiling of $39 million and a minimum around $22 million. Player salaries will not exceed 54% of league-wide revenues, expected to be around $1.8 billion. Players will also put money into escrow, and after each season that will be used to balance out the set percentage based on actual revenues.

Those who are still under contract will have their salaries reduced by 24%, 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.

Even with the salary rollback, nine teams would have been over the cap based on payrolls at the end of the 2003-04 season. There will also be rules changes, some that could include the size of goaltender equipment to a shootout to eliminate tie games.