Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Early Sunday morning NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr announced there was a framework in place for a new collective bargaining agreement. They should of been forced to hug for a while.

Here are the particulars. For the first year, the salary cap is $60 million but teams can spend up to $70.2 million in the transition period, while the floor is $44 million. Sources said the 2013-14 salary cap, a very divisive issue, will be $64.3 million, while the floor will remain at $44 million. Contract salary variance is capped at 35 percent from year to year, with the provision that the last year can’t vary more than 50 percent from the highest-salaried year, a source told ESPN.com. Revenue sharing will spread $200 million, with a $60 million NHLPA-initiated growth fund included.

Although the deal still requires language clarification, legal fine-tuning and ratification from both sides, a verbal agreement has been reached on the major points. “We still have a lot of work to do,” Bettman said, “but it’s good to be at this point.”

The deal still requires majority approval from both the board of governors  by Tuesday and the NHLPA before it can become official.

A 48 and 50 game schedule is said to be ready from the NHL. They need to get teams permission to start formal mini camps and start selling tickets fast. Games are cancelled through Jan 14th so the season will start from the 15th to the 19th.  It’s not an 82 game schedule but at least it will give a true test for a conference winner from both West and East. Out of conference games are the one really lost in this shortened season. It should give a true galvanized winner from both conferences to battle it out. Lord Stanley has been waiting long enough. Time to drop the puck and decide who wants it the most.

New Years 2013 brought a frenzy of activity on twitter as several met from both sides in all sorts of meetings as we have arrived at zero hour.

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Media was left to wait in the cold for results of the latest meetings between the infamous NHL and NHLPA. Not understanding exactly why they felt the need to stand out there or complain about it every article and update but they did. Heck wait for a insider tweet like the rest of us. But dying media is a whole different story.

Gary Bettman added this: “In our response, there were certain things that the players’ association asked for that we agreed to, there were some things that we moved in their direction and there were other things that we said no. But that’s part of the process.”

A new collective bargaining agreement will get done here. The question is will it get done in time for a shortened 48 game season? January 19th is the date targeted to get the season started in time.  To have any hope of a productive season there cannot be any more dilly dallying.

What is needed to compromise?”Nobody’s counting like that,” Bettman said. “We’re not trying to keep score, we’re trying to get an agreement done.”

Asked about the state of negotiations, Fehr declined to reveal much:

“It’s better to be meeting than not, but I’m not saying anything else more about it.”

Wednesday should provide a good gauge on where negotiations stand, however.

In addition to the union’s expected response to the league’s recent offer, the NHLPA must also decide on whether to file a disclaimer of interest. The executive board, authorized the right to make the call after a membership-wide vote in late December, must make a decision on whether to dissolve the union by midnight on Wednesday.