Adding to the growing list of concerns regarding the arena being built for the upcoming Milan Cortina Olympics, now there\u2019s this: The ice surface may be smaller than those used in NHL buildings, which could be a safety concern given the speed of the game.<\/p>\n
The International Ice Hockey Federation approved a 60-meter by 26-meter sheet of ice (196.85-foot by 85.3-foot) in Milan, a source familiar with the decision tells The Athletic, which is more than three feet shorter and only a hair wider than the 200-foot by 85-foot (60.96-meter by 25.91-meter) dimensions required under NHL rules.<\/p>\n
The NHL has sent players to an Olympics with a 60-meter length in the past, but that was with the significantly wider surface (30 meters) typically used for international play. The agreement between the NHL, NHL Players\u2019 Association, International Olympic Committee and IIHF for the Milan Games called for hockey to be played on a surface completed to the specifications used in NHL buildings.<\/p>\n
The NHL did not comment on the situation Tuesday when reached by The Athletic. One source with knowledge of the league\u2019s dealings with the IIHF and IOC on the arena said that the league is looking into it, implying that it was not previously aware of the issue.<\/p>\n
The NHL Players\u2019 Association also told The Athletic on Tuesday that it is \u201clooking into the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
An ice surface with a shorter length but not substantially greater width will leave players with less room to maneuver. That could put players in dangerous situations based on what we saw at the 4 Nations Face-Off in February, which featured some of the fastest, hardest-checking hockey ever played at Montreal\u2019s Bell Centre and Boston\u2019s TD Garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we learned anything from the 4 Nations, it was like, I don\u2019t want to say mistake-free hockey, but the checking, there was no room,\u201d U.S. men\u2019s Olympic team general manager Bill Guerin told The Athletic in October.<\/p>\n
Countries\u2019 Olympic federations have until Dec. 31 to submit 25-player rosters for the Olympics and are aware of the unique rink dimensions. Team Canada assistant coach Pete DeBoer visited Milan earlier this fall and mentioned the shorter Olympic ice surface during an interview with Fan 590 in Toronto on Monday, saying, \u201cI don\u2019t understand how that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consider it the latest in a string of puzzling developments around Santagiulia Arena, a planned 16,000-seat venue scheduled to host 33 games during the Olympics, including both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s gold-medal finals.<\/p>\n
Another problem? Construction is still ongoing, a little more than two months from the opening ceremony. One source well-versed on the building\u2019s status told The Athletic that organizers needed a \u201cbig bomb,\u201d not just a fire, lit under them with the clock ticking loudly.<\/p>\n
The NHL has been raising alarms about the arena for years, with commissioner Gary Bettman expressing concern as far back as the Board of Governors meeting in December of 2023 about the fact that construction hadn\u2019t started at that point. When a group of league personnel toured the site southeast of Milan in August, it found an arena still under construction, with no infrastructure complete, including no roads built to the building. They\u2019d also yet to break ground on the practice facility.<\/p>\n
Those delays forced a planned December test event to be pushed back to Jan. 9 to 11. While there had been growing industry speculation about potentially looking to a rink in Switzerland as a standby venue, it was determined during a mid-November meeting in Stockholm, featuring representatives from the IOC, IIHF and NHL, that there would be no Plan B, according to league sources.<\/p>\n
Following that meeting, NHL representatives Derek King and Dean Matsuzaki visited Milan to give a precise update to the league on the status of construction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt appears that positive forward progress is being made with respect to the necessary hockey-related facilities in Milan,\u201d NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Athletic\u2019s Pierre LeBrun on Nov. 19. \u201cWe intend to continue to monitor progress as we get closer to the planned test events and the Games themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
In October, the IOC said in a statement that the arena is \u201cscheduled for completion in mid-December,\u201d and an IOC spokesperson told The Athletic two weeks ago that the IOC stood by that statement.<\/p>\n
The first Olympic event scheduled for Santagiulia is a women\u2019s preliminary round game between Italy and France on Feb. 5. The men\u2019s tournament runs from Feb. 11 to 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adding to the growing list of concerns regarding the arena being built for the upcoming Milan Cortina Olympics,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":420851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,3777,62,222,67,132,68,196611],"class_list":{"0":"post-420850","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-sports-business","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-womens-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115653335763637569","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420850","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=420850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}