COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said that if the league’s players feel the quality of the ice at the Olympics in Milan is unsafe, “then we’re not going to play.”
“It’s as simple as that,” Daly told reporters after the NHL board of governors meetings on Monday.
Daly told league owners Monday that he didn’t believe construction issues with the Olympic ice hockey rink were “insurmountable.”
The main hockey arena in Milan is scheduled to be finished Feb. 2. The women’s hockey tournament begins three days later, and the men’s tournament, with NHL players set to participate in the Olympics for the first time in over a decade, begins Feb. 11, leaving very little wiggle room.
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The Olympic arenas will feature three games a day for nearly three weeks, which will challenge the resiliency of the ice. Daly categorized the updates the NHL and NHLPA received last week as positive, but said the league was upping its efforts to help see through the arena.
“We have offered and they’re utilizing our ice experts and technicians and outside providers,” Daly said. “We’re basically moving everybody there to try to help get this done in a way that’s acceptable for NHL athletes. And I’m cautiously optimistic it will be fruitful.”
The NHL will have ongoing access to the ice. That will include being on site for a test event scheduled for the main rink from Jan. 9-11.
On Monday, the IIHF acknowledged the two rinks in Milan would be about 3 feet shorter than a standard NHL rink (196.85 feet by 85.3 feet, instead of 200 feet by 85 feet) — which goes against the agreement the NHL and NHLPA signed with the IIHF in July.
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Daly said the league found out about the skewed dimensions last week, and he was not sure how it happened. Some federations were made aware earlier, but Daly said nobody raised the issue to him and the league did not notice the difference in several site visits because it wasn’t anything “perceptible to anybody. It’s not like people bring tape measures there.”
But the NHL and NHLPA are willing to look past that for now — though they will insist the rink for the 2030 Olympics in France is built to NHL standards.
“The players association has canvassed the players and apparently they did not believe it to be a big issue, health and safety issue or a competitive issue,” Daly said.
The Pittsburgh Penguins and Nashville Predators played games on a similar-sized rink last month at the Global Series in Sweden; the solution was to move the lines so the missing ice was accounted for in the neutral zone rather than either offensive zone. Daly said they did not receive any feedback from players after those games.
Organizers have insisted there is no Plan B for the Olympic hockey tournament to be held elsewhere if the rink is not ready. Daly said the NHL also doesn’t have a contingency plan yet if it decides the ice is not suitable.
“I mean, it kind of is what it is,” Daly said. “Having said that, if you’re faced with that being the reality, then you have to think about what you do next. “
The NHL will go dark for a two-week period during the Games. Asked if it was possible to reconfigure the schedule if necessary, Daly said he wasn’t sure yet.
“Well, I can’t tell you exactly what we do,” he said. “What I’d say is, I think in emergency-type situations like that in the past, I think we’ve responded appropriately, came up with good solutions and I have no doubt that we’ll be able to come up with good solutions if we’re faced with that.”
