NHL lockout over!

The NHL Players’ Association has voted to ratify the new collective bargaining agreement with the NHL, the union announced late Saturday afternoon.

The league ratified the CBA on Wednesday with a unanimous 30-0 vote. It’s unknown exactly by what margin the players approved the deal. They voted via an electronic process that ended Saturday at 8 a.m. ET.

Gary Bettman opened his post-lockout press conference on Wednesday with one very clear message to fans of the NHL: We’re sorry, and we need to work to regain your trust. Yes, those words came out of his mouth.

Of course, Bettman wouldn’t go into detail about exactly what kind of work the league will do to regain the trust of fans. No mention of cheaper ticket prices around the league or free NHL Center Ice or sales on merchandise or anything of the sort. But he said we’ll be seeing the “outreaches” and “campaigns” in the coming days. We’ll wait.

The first step in the NHL lockout officially being lifted has occurred.

The NHL’s Board of Governors have ratified the new 10-year collective bargaining agreement that was verbally agreed to on Sunday morning, according to multiple reports on Wednesday afternoon. Pierre LeBrun tweeted that he had received a text message from an unidentified governor who stated that the agreement had been ratified.

With the 113-day lockout seemingly left behind, the 2012-13 NHL season can finally commence (even though games will only be played during 2013).

After a 16-hour marathon negotiation session that has turned United States federal mediator Scot L. Beckenbaugh into a cult hero, the NHL and NHL Player’s Association have come to terms on the framework of a new 10-year collective bargaining agreement.

I woke up, and my wife quickly told me that Syracuse’s Doug Marrone was taking the Buffalo Bills job. Oh, and the lockout is over.

See, even my poor spouse -- a hockey die-hard -- has been conditioned to forget about the NHL over the last (almost) four months. So much so that she buried the lede. Not anymore.

It’s almost as if David Stern and Gary Bettman shared notes. It’s almost like Donald Fehr and Billy Hunter both have copies of Leading A Union Of Millionaires Through A Lockout For Dummies. The NBA and NHL lockouts were disturbingly similar on many points. (It’s worth noting that a number of NHL owners are also NBA owners.)

Relying on Travis Hughes’ superlative NHL lockout timeline, we see that:

After 113 days, the NHL lockout is over. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr met with the media in Manhattan well after 4 a.m. ET, looking tired and haggard and who cares how they looked?! Hockey is going to be a thing again.

“We have reached an agreement on the framework of a new collective bargaining agreement, the details of which need to be put to paper,” Bettman said, mercifully. “We’ve got to dot a lot of I’s, cross a lot of T’s, there’s still a lot of work to be done, but the basic framework of the deal has been agreed upon.”

The NHL and NHL Players Association tentatively came to terms on a new 10-year collective bargaining agreement on Sunday morning, which finally ended the 113-day lockout.

With an agreement in place, the two sides will need to document the deal and then ratify it for the lockout to officially be over. In addition to putting the lockout to rest, the ratification of the new collective bargaining agreement will also determine when the regular season starts and for how long it will last.

The NHL and NHL Players Association tentatively came to terms on a new 10-year collective bargaining agreement early Sunday morning, which ended the league’s 113-day lockout.

Since being enacted on Sept. 15 by commissioner Gary Bettman at the behest of the NHL board of governors, some non-traditional players have become household names with hockey fans -- none of which have ever worn the crest of one of the NHL’s 30 teams.