{"id":334991,"date":"2025-12-08T13:41:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T13:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/334991\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T13:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T13:41:11","slug":"nhl-board-of-governors-convenes-amid-growing-olympic-arena-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/334991\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL Board of Governors convenes amid growing Olympic arena concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. \u2014 It\u2019s the conversation no one wants to be having right now, but the one the game\u2019s highest stakeholders must engage in at this juncture.<\/p>\n

NHLers are on the precipice of returning to the Olympics for the first time since 2010, and the arena housing the Milano-Cortina Games remains incomplete.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a joke,\u201d said a member of one participating team\u2019s management group we touched base with earlier this week.<\/p>\n

Those convening at the Broadmoor Hotel for the NHL Board of Governor meetings this week won\u2019t be laughing at the situation.<\/p>\n

The players don\u2019t appear amused, either.<\/p>\n

They already aired their concerns, with the quality of the ice at the Milano Santa Giulia Arena chief among them.<\/p>\n

Elliotte Friedman\u2019s report on his weekly Saturday Headlines segment on Hockey Night in Canada featured a statement from NHLPA deputy director Ron Hainsey, who said, \u201cThe health and safety of our players while playing on any ice surface will not be compromised.\u201d<\/p>\n

This came just days after Team Canada assistant coach Peter DeBoer let it be known on an episode of Real Kyper and Bourne that the ice surface being prepared will be three to four inches shorter and just slightly wider than a standard NHL ice surface.<\/p>\n

And in between DeBoer\u2019s comments being made and Hainsey\u2019s warning being issued, NHL deputy director Bill Daly told Daily Faceoff\u2019s Matt Larkin<\/a>, \u201cIf there\u2019s no rink completed, there\u2019s no NHL players going to the Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n

None were featured at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, and COVID-19 pandemic prevented their return at the 2022 Beijing Games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Commitments were made for the upcoming ones in Italy, and the NHL and NHLPA are demanding that the International Olympic Committee and the International Ice Hockey Federation deliver on theirs.<\/p>\n

It was in the third week of November that the NHL and NHLPA imposed a one-month deadline on the IOC and IIHF to make the necessary progress on completing the arena. It\u2019s expected they\u2019ll update the governors this week on whether the project is trending according to schedule.<\/p>\n

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Both the IOC and IIHF expressed confidence that the arena will be ready on time.<\/p>\n

They have made no contingency plans so far to play the games elsewhere, and they haven\u2019t expressed any intention of developing any.<\/p>\n

Still, with every day that goes by, concern is mounting, making the subject unavoidable in Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n

The governors are gathered here for meetings to receive the same updates they receive every December from the league \u2014 on whether revenues are meeting, falling short or exceeding pre-season projections \u2014 and to hear from the hockey operations department on player safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n

League business (team shares being sold\/purchased) is also typically conducted at these meetings.<\/p>\n

And Sportsnet can confirm\u00a0The Athletic’s report<\/a> that this week\u2019s sessions are expected to cover some of the new CBA rules that have already been implemented for this season, salary cap projections, the future of television rights in the United States (with the current partnerships with TNT and ESPN set to expire at the end of the 2027-28 season), and the plans for the return of the World Cup of Hockey in 2028.<\/p>\n

While parties in Atlanta, Houston, Arizona and Quebec are believed to have previously expressed interest in owning NHL teams, expansion is not expected to be on the BOG agenda.<\/p>\n

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said it wasn\u2019t a \u201cfront-burner\u201d issue when the Governors met last December.<\/p>\n

The Olympic issue, however, is a scorching-hot topic right now.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s tournament is supposed to run Feb. 11-22, and testing of the venue, which is typically done at least a year prior to the beginning of an Olympic event, isn\u2019t expected to be conducted before the end of the second week of January.<\/p>\n

That leaves practically no margin for error for the IOC to provide a venue that meets NHL standards in time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Given how the project has gone so far, confidence that they\u2019ll deliver is on shaky ground.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see where it\u2019s at after two days of meetings at the Broadmoor wrap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. \u2014 It\u2019s the conversation no one wants to be having right now, but the one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-334991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}