Once upon a time, the National Hockey League’s owners locked out their players.

It really wasn’t that long ago, only a matter of months. But in the midst of a particularly gripping Stanley Cup finals series between Chicago and Boston, two clubs from traditional hockey markets, it seems now like ancient history, if it is remembered at all.

The only lockout references one hears now involve the delay in the league’s draft, which will take place at the Prudential Center in Newark next Sunday, about a week later than usual, and the announcement of the league’s major individual awards before Games 2 and 3 last Saturday and Monday — and only because the annual televised awards show from Las Vegas was a lockout casualty.

From September to January, while the lockout wore on, some predicted the league’s fans would punish the owners and players by staying home and not tuning in. But as basketball fans did after the N.B.A.’s 2011 lockout, N.H.L. fans came back immediately and in droves.

■ N.H.L. teams played to 97.5 percent capacity, and average attendance was 17,768, up 2.6 percent compared with last year’s full-season figure. Average attendance for 25 of 30 teams was up or equal to their full season 2011-12 attendance average.

■ There were healthy leaps in regular-season network television audiences on both sides of the border. NBC’s viewership increased 15 percent (compared with a 2011-12 figure that omits the Winter Classic, which was canceled this season because of the lockout), and NBC Sports Network posted an 18 percent jump, for the N.H.L.’s strongest national cable audience since 1993-94. On local television, 22 clubs had double- or triple-digit percentage increases in viewership.

■ Stanley Cup finals viewership is also up in both the United States and Canada, with NBC and NBC Sports Network averaging 5.356 million viewers over the first four games, the largest network audience in the United States since that figure was first tracked in 1994.

Rather than channel their rage against the league, fans have turned the channel to its games.

It’s all quite a contrast to the N.H.L.’s other lockout-shortened half-season, 1994-95, in which attendance was flat and American viewership decreased. In addition, the hockey was rarely entertaining and the poorly contested playoffs in 1995 limped along once the first round ended, with four of the seven remaining series — including the Devils-Red Wings finals — resulting in sweeps and none going the full seven games.

Not only has this most recent lockout become a nonissue, its results have been seamlessly incorporated into the game’s landscape, something that would have been hard to fathom during the contentious months of negotiation.

For example, among the most spirited discussions in hockey circles is which famous, wealthy players will be let go under the compliance buyout provision of the new collective bargaining agreement. There has already been one such buyout announced: Flyers forward Danny Briere was bought out last week, shaving $6.5 million from Philadelphia’s payroll and making Briere a free agent.

Rangers fans are mulling the possibility of center Brad Richards getting similar treatment. Brian Cooper, the president of the Toronto sports management company S&E Sponsorship Group, was one of many business analysts who said the lockout, coming so soon after the lockout that wiped out the 2004-5 season, would hurt the N.H.L.’s business.

“What people want from a brand is consistency of product, accessibility and emotional connection that’s uninterrupted,” he said in December.

But, Cooper also pointed out, the N.B.A. came back from a truncated season and had its best metrics across the board. “If that can happen, maybe the N.H.L. can come back too,” he said.

That is what Commissioner Gary Bettman and the owners were counting on, and that is what happened. They shut the league down, achieved their goal of sharply reducing the players’ share of revenues, and came out the other side with no lasting damage to the league’s image.

“We recovered last time because we have the world’s greatest fans,” Bettman said in August, just before the lockout. Commentators reacted in high dudgeon at the time, but Bettman had it right: when the actual hockey got started, the lockout would be forgotten.

Now the Stanley Cup may wind up going to the Bruins, who are owned by Jeremy Jacobs, chairman of the N.H.L. Board of Governors and the chief hard-liner during the lockout. At least in a business sense, that would be a fitting end to a highly unusual season.