A game was played on Tuesday at the secondary Rho Ice Hockey Arena, one of two planned hockey venues during the Milano Cortina Games in February.
But the question remains whether Santagiulia’s main hockey arena will be ready on time, despite officials saying the 16,000-seat facility will be good for playing.
The concerns surrounding the rink are not just about whether the structure will be ready, but also whether the ice will be playable at all.
“They haven’t made any ice yet,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said during a news conference in Winnipeg on Wednesday. “So we don’t know yet how good the ice is on rink number one.”
February’s Olympics will be the first to feature NHL players since 2014.
The NHL says it has sent its own ice specialists to help with preparations, but the league says until the surface is tested with skaters and the warmth of many fans in the arena, it may not be clear whether the quality will be good enough.
“If the ice isn’t ready and it’s not safe, then we’re not going,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said. “I mean, I think that goes without saying.”
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The size of the rinks is also an issue, with the NHL caught off guard earlier this year when it became clear that the dimensions of both will be slightly wider and a meter shorter than what the league and the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) had agreed on.
Daly told the Associated Press that the league and the NHL Players’ Association have reminded the IIHF that they expect the ice surface at the 2030 Winter Games in France to be standard NHL size.
During Tuesday’s game, Japan captain Daigo Hotta said the ice on the Rho rink became firmer during game time, although he had said it was “a little soft” during a pre-game skate. The size was immediately noticeable, Hotta said.
“I play in the United States. The rinks are pretty small, but I think this is one of the smallest rinks I’ve ever played on,” Hotta said. “The neutral zone is smaller. The space between the dots and the signs. I think everything is a little smaller than normal.”
The match was part of the Group B Under-20 World Cup held this week.
Daly acknowledged that the groups “had a misunderstanding.”
Milano Cortina’s head of gaming operations recently dismissed questions about the size of the rink, noting that the ice surfaces comply with IIHF rules. The official also said the ice is the same size as the rinks used in Beijing in 2022 and in Stockholm, Sweden, where the Pittsburgh Penguins and Nashville Predators played twice last month as part of the NHL’s Global Series.
“Obviously the dimensions of the rink are different, but when you come to play in Europe, all the rinks have these kinds of dimensions,” Andrea Francisi said on Tuesday. “So somehow you have to adapt to these kinds of dimensions.”
The NHL says it’s trying to put the problem in the past, saying it won’t make too much of a difference in the game, but the big concern remains that no Olympic hockey venue has been this far from completion, this close to puck drop.
The first hockey match of the Olympic Games is on February 5, when the women’s tournament starts.
—with files from Mike Armstrong of Global News and The Associated Press
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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