NHL players will be back at the Olympics in February for the first time since 2014, but the planned main arena for ice hockey might not be ready in time for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Games in Italy.<\/p>\n
Construction on the venue is behind schedule, and organizers say there presently is no backup plan if it is not completed in time.<\/p>\n
An outside view of the Santa Giulia Ice Hockey Arena on Oct. 24, 2025, in Milan, Italy, where the hockey games of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place. AP<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no Plan B,\u201d Andrea Francisi, the chief Games operations officer for Milan-Cortina said Saturday, according to The Associated Press. \u201cSo necessarily we have to be able to organize the competition in an impeccable manner at Santagiulia.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ice hockey competition is scheduled to begin with a women\u2019s game on Feb. 5, one day ahead of the Opening Ceremonies. <\/p>\n
The men\u2019s tournament is slated to take place Feb. 11-22.<\/p>\n
Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena on Jan. 15, 2025. AP<\/p>\n
Francisi added he is confident \u201cfor the moment\u201d that the venue will be ready in time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are daily updates in the sense that our team is there working every day,\u201d he said. \u201cThe companies which are involved with the building of the facility have sped up their work significantly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re monitoring all that daily together with them. There\u2019s great collaboration between us. We\u2019re creating a coordinated plan between their work and our preparations and for the moment we\u2019re healthily optimistic, but 100% we\u2019ll do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Santa Giulia Ice Hockey Arena pictured on Oct. 24, 2025. AP<\/p>\n
Typically, Olympic venues are required to be tested a year or more in advance, especially arenas with ice to address any quality and safety concerns. <\/p>\n
But the AP reported that a scheduled test event at the 16,000 seat arena already had to be postponed until the middle of January.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NHL players will be back at the Olympics in February for the first time since 2014, but the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":414225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,3777,62,67,132,68,87294],"class_list":{"0":"post-414224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-olympics","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-winter-olympics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115636505626183424","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}