Olympic ice creating potential nightmare in NHL…
If the ice isn’t protected, the NHL will take its puck and go home.
That was the message NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told reporters in Colorado on Monday amid news of ongoing points with the Olympic ice hockey rink being constructed in Milan, Italy for the Winter Games in two months.
Daly had told NHL homeowners that he didn’t imagine the problems have been “insurmountable,” but with a tight window between anticipated completion and the start of the lads’s event, the message was simple.
General view inside the stadium during the 2026 IIHF U20 World Championship Division Group B match between Estonia and Japan at Milano Rho Ice Hockey Arena on December 08, 2025 in Milan, Italy. The event serves as take a look at event for the upcoming Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. Getty Images
“If the players feel that the ice is unsafe to play, then we’re not going to play,” the deputy commish told reporters, per ESPN. “It’s as simple as that.”
The completion of the world and the standard of the ice have turn out to be growing considerations with the main hockey area’s completion schedule nicely behind what it had been anticipated to be — it’s now said to be achieved on Feb. 2 — leaving just three days before ladies’s and males’s competitions start.
Furthermore, two of the ice rinks in Milan might be roughly three ft smaller than what a normal NHL sheet of ice is, which violates the phrases that the IIHF, the NHL and NHLPA had agreed to back in July.
A standard NHL rink is 200 ft by 85 ft and the rinks in Milan might be 196.85 ft by 85.3 ft.
Daly told reporters that the league and the gamers affiliation are usually not involved about it as of now and that the NHLPA had addressed it with its membership, which “did not believe it to be a big issue, health and safety issue or a competitive issue.”
However, the drama around the completion of the world and questions about potential questions of safety for the ice have induced an surprising headache as the NHL ready to return to Olympic hockey for the first time since 2014.
The construction website of the PalaItalia Santa Giulia ice hockey area, which can host the hockey and para hockey competitions at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, in Milan, Italy. REUTERS
The NHL had not allowed its gamers to partake in the Olympics since the Sochi Games.
The league is stepping up its participation in the world efforts and the host nation is taking benefit of an offer made by the NHL for it to make the most of their ice consultants, technicians and exterior suppliers, Daly said.
He labeled himself as “cautiously optimistic” that the NHL’s efforts might be “fruitful” and acknowledged that there’s no play by organizers or by the league for Olympic hockey to be performed elsewhere if issues aren’t prepared.
“I mean, it kind of is what it is,” Daly said. “Having said that, if you’re confronted with that being the fact, then you’ve to suppose about what you do next. “
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