NHL Says They're Getting Positive Reports On Completely Goofed-Up Olympic Ice

There's always a goofy, ridiculous story in the lead-up to the Olympics. Who could forget the Paris Games' race against the clock to make sure that the Seine was turd-free?

But the 2026 Winter Games have a "turd in the Seine" that comes in the form of a hockey rink that was, for some reason, built to the wrong specs.

After rumblings that the rink inside the still-delayed Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena — the primary home of hockey at the 2026 Games in Milan — had a playing surface that was a few feet short, it was confirmed that the rink would be 196.86-feet long by 85.3-feet long, as opposed to the standard NHL dimensions of 200 feet by 85 feet that it was supposed to be.

READ: TEAM USA COACH SAYS NHL RINKS ARE TOO SMALL AMID OLYMPIC ICE FIASCO

In fact, the tournament being played on an NHL-sized ice sheet was one of the conditions of the league sending its players to the Games for the first time since 2014.

So how did this happen? Well, it sounds like good old-fashioned miscommunication.

"I think the IIHF was under the impression they had a different interpretation of what NHL ice meant than we would have," NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said, per NHL.com. "Even at the site visits, I'm not sure it was anything that was perceptible to anybody. It's not like people bring tape measures there. So, for whatever reason, it came back the way it came back."

The Olympic hockey rink in Milan was mistakenly built to the wrong specs instead of NHL dimensions, sparking confusion just months before the 2026 Games, but the league says they're getting positive updates. (Getty Images)

It is a small enough difference that no NHL reps would've noticed it by eye, but how did the folks building the arena not get this right? Oddly enough, the length — 196.85 or 60 meters — is the standard length of an IIHF ice-sheet.

Sure sounds like someone simply goofed up on the length and then measured poorly on the width.

The discrepancy isn't huge, but it seems like it should've been pretty easily avoidable. Still, Daly says the league is getting positive updates, with only two months before the tournament begins.

"I'm getting positive reports about what they're going to do, what the next plan is, what the next day is, what it looks like, how the parties are reacting, et cetera, et cetera," he said. "Today was a fairly positive day."

Well, let's hope that despite the stumbling start, we get a good tournament come February.