{"id":409977,"date":"2026-01-13T11:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/409977\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T11:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:06:16","slug":"winter-olympics-ice-hockey-nhl-pleased-with-test-event-for-milan-cortina-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/409977\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Olympics ice hockey: NHL &#8216;pleased&#8217; with test event for Milan-Cortina Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics will take place from 6-22 February, with ice hockey matches split between the new Santagiulia Arena and the existing Milano Rho Arena.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The rink in Milan, approved by the IIHF, is shorter than the minimum requirement in the NHL, leading to suggestions there could be an increase in high-speed collisions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">During the test event, there was a short delay while a small hole in the ice had to be repaired on Friday before the other matches took place without incident.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">IIHF president Luc Tardif said &#8220;the puck was sliding and not bumping&#8221; and believes &#8220;there is no reason that the NHL will not come&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters: &#8220;There are still challenges because the building is still under construction and the ice is new.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We&#8217;ve been assured that, or we expect, that everything that needs to be done on a timely basis will get done. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But, as you know, it&#8217;s not our event. We&#8217;re invited guests. We&#8217;ve offered to help and consult and advise as they feel they need and would be appropriate because we do have a little bit of expertise in that area.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics will take place from 6-22 February, with ice hockey matches split between the new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-409977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409977","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=409977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}