The National Hockey was League lockout is over as of 5 a.m. on Jan. 6. It took 16 hours worth of meetings and negotiations Saturday and Sunday morning to come to an agreement on both sides.

The 2012–13 NHL lockout was a labor dispute that began on Sept 15, 2012, and ended on Jan 6, lasting 113 days. The owners of the league’s franchises, led by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, declared a lockout of the members of the National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA) after a new agreement could not be reached before the deadline of the NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), nearly a month before the season was scheduled to begin. The lockout shortened the 2012–13 NHL season, which originally was scheduled to begin on Oct. 11, 2012. A total of 625 regular-season games through Jan. 14, 2013, accounting for 50.8 percent of the regular season’s 1,230 games, were cancelled as a result of the lockout. On Jan. 6, the league lifted the lockout after the announcement of a tentative CBA deal, with the intention of starting the season on either Jan. 15 or 19.

“I was devastated when the NHL went into the lockout. I have season tickets to the Blues and I miss the fans and the fights. It’s what we live for,” sophomore Ben Hushaw said.

Many people are happy to be going back to work and fans are becoming excited to go see their favorite teams get back on the ice and go at it again.

“I started watching it on TV with my mom. Then back in like third grade we went to a Blues game, and from there we bought half season tickets. Now we buy a full season to go and see as many Blues games as we can,”  Hushaw said.

In an average season NHL team plays 82 games: 41 at home and 41 on the road. This season however, the season has been shortened to 48 or 50 games.

“[The fan] They live for everything. It’s a sport that you can play until you die. It’s not about the Winter Classic or The Cup; It’s about being out there enjoying the game,” Hushaw said.