Milan’s hockey rink still isn’t ready. Will NHL players skip another Winter Olympics?

Will the National Hockey League pull its players from the upcoming Winter Olympics in Italy?

It’s an open question since the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, on the outskirts of Milan, is still under construction.

And with the start of the Winter Games just two months away, there’s evidently no backup plan if the arena fails to reach the finish line.

Should that happen, one league official says hockey fans should not expect to see NHL players hitting the ice.

“If there’s no rink completed, there’s no NHL players going to the Olympics,” NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly told the hockey news site Daily Faceoff on Wednesday.

The league itself did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The National Hockey League Players’ Association said on Thursday evening it could not provide an immediate comment.

If the NHL withdraws from the Milano-Cortina Games, it would mark the third consecutive Winter Olympics that its players were absent: The NHL did not participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, nor in Beijing in 2022.

A smaller rink

The arena is also reportedly being been built to noticeably smaller dimensions than an NHL rink.

“The ice surface, it looks like it’s going to be smaller than NHL rink standards, by probably three or four feet,” Peter DeBoer, a Team Canada assistant coach, told the Real Kyper & Bourne radio show, earlier this week.

Doug Armstrong, the general manager of Canada’s men’s Olympic hockey team, says it’s not clear how that pared-down sizing would play out on the ice itself.

WATCH | Does size matter?:

The Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena in Milan, which has faced construction delays, is now expected to have an ice surface that’s a few feet smaller than an NHL-sized rink.

It depends “where they’re going to take the ice out of — is it going to be in the neutral zone? Is it going to be in all three zones equally? Is it going to go just in the offensive zone?” he told CBC Sports on Wednesday.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how they make those subtle changes.”

However, Armstrong said the reduced size would not affect Team Canada’s roster choices.

The men’s Olympic hockey tournament is slated to run from Feb. 11 to Feb. 22 — the latter being the day set for the gold medal game.