Bill Daly: ‘If rink not completed, no NHLers going to the Olympics’

“If you build it, they will come.” Everyone knows the famous quote from the classic 1989 baseball movie Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner. As we’re learning from the ongoing rink-construction saga at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics, though, the opposite is just as true; if you don’t build it, they won’t come.

NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said as much when speaking with Daily Faceoff’s Matt Larkin. To the question of the percentage chance that NHLers don’t wind up going to the upcoming Winter Olympics after all, Daly replied, “Depends on the percentage you want to place on the possibility the rink doesn’t get completed.  If there’s no rink completed, there’s no NHL players going to the Olympics.”

The bizarre circumstance that an appropriate hockey rink won’t be constructed in time for next February’s Winter Olympics is creeping closer and closer towards the realm of possibility. The Division 1B World Junior tournament, which is scheduled to begin on December 8th and was meant to be played at the Santa Giulia Ice Hockey Arena in Milan as a test event for the Olympics, had to be relocated as construction on the arena is behind schedule.

Even if we assume the rink does get constructed in time for the Olympics, there’s a concern that the ice-surface itself will be smaller than expected. Pete DeBoer, a member of the Canadian men’s coaching staff, expressed earlier in the week that the rink will be even smaller than the NHL standard.

For the NHL, that has clearly been wary of sending their players to the Olympics (NHL players haven’t played in the Olympics since 2014), this has to be a nightmare scenario. Unless things take a drastic turn for the better, this experience could embolden the league to eschew Olympic participation for the forseeable future.