48-game NHL season seems likely

Hockey fans will have to be patient for a little while longer.

The timeline for the start of a shortened NHL season remained up in the air one day after the league and NHL Players' Association shook hands on a tentative deal to end the lockout.

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Canadian Press on Monday morning that hope for a 50-game schedule had already faded as the sides continued to finalize the memorandum of understanding their constituents will each vote on later in the week.

As a result, the league is likely to return with a 48-game season starting Jan. 19, assuming there are no major hiccups before then.

"It depends on ratification timeline for PA, but it's looking more and more like 48 games is going to be the only option," Daly said in an email.

While there was no sense the deal was in peril, it was clearly taking the parties time to get everything down in writing.

As of Monday night, they had yet to complete a memorandum of understanding which was likely to run over a couple hundred pages when completed.

That will have to happen before the league's Board of Governors convene on Wednesday afternoon to hold a ratification vote.

The union expected a ballot of 740 players to take until the weekend to carry out. While it had yet to officially schedule a window for an electronic vote, the NHLPA was contemplating one that would end at some point on Saturday.

Both sides need to get majority support to adopt the tentative deal they reached early Sunday morning following a marathon 16-hour negotiating session.

Even after announcing the tentative agreement around 6 a.m., they went right back to work on the language of the new pension plan, which ended up being one of the final hurdles for them to cross in negotiations.

A 50-game schedule held appeal for both sides, but the league figured it needed to start to start the season in the middle of next week to avoid seeing the Stanley Cup awarded in July. That simply won't be able to happen.

"Of course the league will say if the players hurry up, we can play more games, but there's a reality to consider as well," Los Angeles Kings forward Kevin Westgarth told The Associated Press on Monday. "But the first step is for the people who are good with words to get on paper what both sides agreed to.

"Then, we have to get guys - who are scattered all over the world - to understand the agreement before we can start voting."