By November 2004 it became apparent that the entire 2004–05 season was in jeopardy and supposedly "last-ditch" efforts were undertaken to avoid this, but little, if any, progress was seen during the last few months of 2004.
There was some hope that a season could have been salvaged, as hockey legends Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, both now part-owners of NHL teams, brought the owners and players together for talks on February 19.
The most important provision of the new collective bargaining agreement was an overall salary cap for all NHL teams, tied to league revenues.
On September 4, 2010, the NHL and NHLPA ratified an agreement to alter how the salary cap hit of long-term contracts would be calculated.
These changes came shortly after Ilya Kovalchuk's contract extension with the New Jersey Devils was voided, due to "cap circumvention".
Other long-term contracts, such as Marc Savard, Roberto Luongo and Marian Hossa, were grandfathered and their respective cap hits calculated under the old accounting system.
The players' association could not move the expiration date to June 30 in order to avoid a repeat of the lockout that cancelled the 2004–05 season.
Just after 5 AM on January 6, 2013, after approximately 16 continuous hours of negotiating, a tentative deal was reached on a new collective bargaining agreement to end the lockout.