Executive director Donald Fehr

It looks like there will be a hockey season after all -- shortened for sure, but perhaps back in business in a week or so. The NHL and the players' association reached a tentative agreement early Sunday to end a nearly four-month-old lockout that threatened to wipe out what was left of an already abbreviated season.

If there is going to be a hockey season, the NHL and the players' association can't afford many more days like this.

Hockey players are sticking together as a union for now and are working long and late hours with the NHL to try to reach a new collective bargaining agreement to get the game back on the ice.

The proposals are flying back and forth between the NHL and the players' association. Whether significant progress is being made in the process still isn't all that clear.

The NHL and the players' association will start the new year right where they ended the old one -- at the bargaining table. Negotiations are expected to resume Tuesday after the league reviews a counterproposal presented by the players on Monday.

Negotiators from the NHL and the players' association made it into the same room to talk this time. They just didn't carry any meaningful progress out of it.

The NHL eliminated 16 more days from the regular-season schedule Monday, and if a deal with the players' association isn't reached soon the whole season could be lost.

The best news on the 80th day of the NHL lockout was that hockey owners and players did most of their talking in front of each other instead of making public statements.