{"id":342623,"date":"2025-12-11T07:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T07:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/342623\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T07:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T07:43:08","slug":"nhl-warns-top-players-will-not-show-up-for-winter-olympics-if-venue-is-unsafe-winter-olympics-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/342623\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL warns top players will not show up for Winter Olympics if venue is unsafe | Winter Olympics 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NHL says it is \u201cdisappointing\u201d that the main ice hockey venue for the Winter Olympics<\/a> will not be ready until the new year \u2013 and warned that its top players will not show up unless the ice is shown to be safe.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s and women\u2019s tournaments are expected to be among the highlights of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games with the NHL<\/a> stars showing up for the first time since 2014.<\/p>\n

However, the buildup continues to be marred by construction delays and questions over why the rink at the Santagiulia Arena in Milan is smaller and wider than in the NHL, as well as concerns over the quality of the ice. And while the International Olympic Committee insisted on Tuesday that everything would be ready on time, the NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman, made it clear he was not entirely happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that the building at this point still isn\u2019t completed is \u2013 and I won\u2019t use any other adjectives \u2013 disappointing,\u201d Bettman said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the NHL deputy commissioner, Bill Daly, warned organisers that the 14,700-seat arena had to be able to withstand three games in a day otherwise the players would not show up. \u201cIf the ice isn\u2019t ready and it\u2019s not safe, then we\u2019re not going,\u201d Daly said. \u201cI mean, I think that\u2019s pretty self-evident.\u201d<\/p>\n

Construction delays have meant that there will be no ice in the arena before the new year \u2013 with the test event now being pushed back to 9-11 January. The IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, insisted that despite the hiccups, it would be a case of all right on the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to push through and continue until the very last moment,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we\u2019re very impressed, very happy with everything that we\u2019re seeing and hearing. As we get close, we just need to keep our finger on the pulse in terms of the ice hockey rink.<\/p>\n

The IOC sports director, Pierre Ducrey, also insisted that concerns around the small rink size had now been \u201csuccessfully resolved\u201d with the NHL and its players. \u201cSo we are very happy with where we stand at present,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Elsewhere the IOC made light of sluggish ticket sales, saying that 70% of the tickets for the Games had now been sold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NHL says it is \u201cdisappointing\u201d that the main ice hockey venue for the Winter Olympics will not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-342623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}