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Forget about thin ice. For now, there’s no ice.

With NHL athletes preparing to return to the Olympics for the first time in over a ten years, building work on the main hockey arena for the Milan-Cortina Games is going down to the wire.

Officials confirmed on Wednesday that the main trial competition for the 16,000-seat Santagiulia facility originally planned for December has been relocated to a smaller arena – and that no new test event has been arranged yet.

The issue creates the possibility that there might not be a game held in the primary venue until the competition begins for the women’s preliminary round at the Olympics on 5 February – 24 hours before the inaugural event.

“It’s going to be very close to the beginning of the Olympics, the timeline is highly compressed. But we knew that,” Milan-Cortina organizing body CEO Andrea Varnier said recently.

The event that was intended to evaluate the Santagiulia ice was part of the under-20 world championship from 8-14 December. That event has been transferred to the Rho Fiera hockey venue, which is being established inside a massive exhibition hall on Milan’s outskirts and will host lesser games during the games.

Usually, freshly built Olympic facilities are tested at least the year before to holding medal events. And with a large hockey arena, it’s not just about the playing surface and ensuring that the playing surface is ready and secure. It’s additionally about checking food outlets, bathrooms and everything else inside a brand-new contemporary stadium.

The Santagiulia venue, which is being built by a private company, is slated to become the nation's largest covered stadium. Following the Olympics, it’s being considered as a potential future host of the ATP Tour Finals tennis tournament.

Despite the delays and worries, high-priced tickets are already being purchased for matches at the Santagiulia arena. Seats for the men’s gold medal final on 22 February – the final day of the games – are going for as much as €1,400 (more than $1,600). This exceeds for any other sports event at the Milan-Cortina Games. Solely tickets for the inaugural and final events are priced higher.

The return of NHL stars at the Olympics was announced last February, with the premier hockey league allowing its athletes to compete in the Winter Olympics for the initial occasion since 2014 in Sochi.

Men's Olympic hockey tournament is scheduled to run from 11-22 February. The women’s tournament occurs from 5-19 February.