With the two sides finally coming to terms on a collective bargaining agreement yesterday, they will embark on an uncertain future that does not include a legitimate television deal in the United States or any real indication of how fans will react to the league becoming the first in pro sports history to wipe out an entire season with a labour dispute.

"It's a whole new world out there," said veteran Maple Leafs winger Tie Domi, who will almost certainly take home less than half of the $1.9 million (all figures U.S.) he would have earned had the season not been wiped out.

Leafs veteran Tie Domi, along with crew members of HMCS Toronto, which is docked on the waterfront this week, make the peace sign after learning NHL and players had settled on a new collective agreement.

It will indeed be a new world for the league's 700 players, in the form of smaller salaries for those who are free agents and a 24 per cent rollback for those who are under contract. And the less-than-encouraging news for players who have made concessions on almost every aspect of the deal is that they might not even be close to finished on what they have to give back.

An integral part of the contract requires each player to place a portion of his salary — believed to be 15 per cent — in escrow in the event that league revenues fall short of the $1.8 billion projected by both sides in the first year of the deal.

Considering that revenues were $2.1 billion in 2003-04, that might be a wildly optimistic projection, but it also takes into account that team owners will have to come totally clean on all their revenues as part of the agreement. National Basketball Association players have had a 10 per cent escrow requirement the past four years and have lost that income in each of those years.

At least one sports business specialist thinks the $1.8 billion projection is far too optimistic. Andrew Zimbalist, a sports marketing expert from Smith College in Northampton, Mass., thinks the league's revenues will be more along the lines of $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion.

"This is going to be a very long rebuilding process," Zimbalist said. "If you compare it to baseball, 11 years later they're still not back at where they were when the season was cancelled in 1994.

"This is despite the fact it is the national pastime, there are about a dozen new stadiums, they had Cal Ripken's streak and (Sammy) Sosa, (Mark) McGwire and (Barry) Bonds and the Yankees dynasty returning. It strikes me that if you look at the pattern that was established, at best hockey will do what baseball did and that's a best-case scenario."

The NHL will try to get fans back, particularly in the U.S., with an aggressive marketing strategy in which the league intends to re-brand itself and offer a better on-ice product with rules that will finally clamp down on obstruction and allow stars the room they need, smaller goalie equipment and more teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Teams all over the league have slashed ticket prices and will be making an effort to be more fan friendly.

The teams have an enormous amount of heavy lifting that needs to be done between now and when next season opens, likely Oct.5. Many teams are in single digits in terms of the number of players under contract for next season and will probably only have the month of August to build their rosters.

Getting under an expected salary cap of $39 million will be a daunting task for wealthy teams such as the Leafs, Philadelphia Flyers and Detroit Red Wings, while getting their payrolls up to the projected floor of $22 million will pose a challenge for others.

"It will take some time, not just for us," Leafs GM John Ferguson said.

"Everyone has to get a real good feel for what the new rules may be and how they're going to impact clubs and player contracts."

The deal, which is highlighted by the salary cap, limits on entry-level salaries, revenue sharing and the rollback on existing contracts, has been viewed as an enormous victory for the owners, who went into the process insisting they needed some form of cost certainty in order to survive.

"We were fighting a losing battle the whole way," Philadelphia centre Jeremy Roenick, who could see the remaining $4.9 million on his contract bought out by the Flyers, told TSN yesterday.

Many players who missed a full season of the game they love, along with a year of pay, were clearly relieved by yesterday's developments. Executives were left to wonder how the sport will recover.

"At the end of the day, everybody lost," Wayne Gretzky said. "We almost crippled our industry."

With files from Canadian Press