Will Olympic arena issues affect the quality of games? 

The Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympics are quickly approaching, and concerns about the NHL’s participation are starting to mount. 

With the NHL returning to the Olympic men’s hockey tournament for the first time since Sochi 2014, concerns about construction at the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, the new 16,000-seat venue on the outskirts of Milan, and the ice size have taken headlines with less than two months until puck drop. 

The Olympic ice will be slightly wider and more than three feet shorter.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton dove into their concerns. 

Yaremchuk: The quote from Bill Daly is that “If the players feel that the ice is unsafe to play, then we’re not going to play. It’s as simple as that.”

I do know there is some concern about whether this arena can withstand the amount of hockey that’s gonna need to be played on it. Daly said the obstacles are not insurmountable, which, if you’re looking for a bit of positivity from the league perspective, there you go: it’s not deemed insurmountable by the NHL. 

The arena is currently scheduled to be finished on Feb 2, and the first women’s game is scheduled for Feb. 5. That’s three days of wiggle room, and that’s crazy to me that they’ve known for years that the Olympics are coming, and it’s coming down to three days.

Hutton: You also never know what the problems could be moving forward, and then you gotta think about the quality of ice and quality of play, and that is another big issue.

After every single game in the NHL, there’s actually a form that’s filled out by somebody on the training staff, the equipment manager, and then a player rep. A player rep fills out the ice quality form after every game at Alex Steen did it when I was in St. Louis. He used to write a lot of funny comments because the ice was horrible, but that goes to someone, and they try to make changes.

That being said, how particular guys are, and these are superstars, with the way that the ice isn’t even playing field. I just worry that there’s gonna be a lack of quality, which just changes the whole impact of the tournament in my eyes again.

You can catch the full Olympic discussion and the rest of the episode here…