Game on!
Let the roar return. Let the Cup, again, runneth over. Let the Zamboni sweep up all the bad blood on the ice before the hard hits in the corner spill some fresh stuff.
Let hockey return, at last, at last.
The NHL and the players' union have reached a tentative agreement to end their suicidal labor dispute that cost the league a season, the fans a year of memories and the sport its credibility. The season should begin the first weekend in October.
That doesn't mean the challenges facing this sport are any less significant.
Hockey took a beating from non-fans in the general public and the media. It took a reality check with its popularity. It will have to return with an improved product, an improved attitude and an improved business sense.
Television exposure will be less. Media coverage – after print editors and TV producers learned how few fans follow the league – will be down. Sponsorships and average fan interest will struggle to return to 2004 levels.
Just to return to its pre-lockout levels, the NHL will make moves to speed up play, increase scoring and energize action. It has to.
But at least there is hockey. At least there is hope. And that makes this a great day for anyone who loves the game.
In the meantime, don't be fooled by anyone associated with this that anything was won. Don't let the NHL claim it won anything here, that it broke the union's spirit and wallet to get what it wanted. The damage that commissioner Gary Bettman has done to this league may be impossible to repair.
That he was willing to risk the entire league so teams in small, non-hockey markets can limp along remains an unfathomable business choice. You pick your battles, for sure. Hockey in Atlanta is a strange one to choose.
The salary cap is a boon to smaller market franchises that couldn't compete financially with the wealthier, traditional market franchises. This was choosing a system that helps Carolina and Nashville, not Detroit and Toronto.
I still think Bettman and union chief Bob Goodenow should both immediately resign. Neither should feel an ounce of good about salvaging the foundation of a house their collective incompetence set fire to.
But I will give both sides credit for this. They met almost constantly for the last 10 weeks and were truly determined to get a deal done before a second season was gone.
Not that it ever should have taken this long for that to happen.
Of course, if Bettman was half the commissioner his ego says he is, the league he's presided over since 1993 wouldn't be an over-expanded, under-performing mess of red ink. And if Goodenow was half the shrewd negotiator he vainly believes, he would have signed the players to the far, far superior deal that would have saved the season last February.
When billionaires fight millionaires, it isn't hard to predict who will win.
But what's lost is lost. What's done is done.
All of that is in the past. The future is about the return of the hits, the shots, the scores, the fights, the rivalries and the chill of overtime on a warm spring night. The future is about another chase for the Stanley Cup.
Today we have a deal, we have hope. So freeze up the ice, tape up the sticks, fire up the Zamboni.
Restore the roar.
