Olympic Hockey Hit With Scandal After Ice Surface Revealed to Be Too Small

Team Canada has taken home the gold in ice hockey at three of the last six Winter Olympics, and one of its coaches is raising alarm in the leadup to the 2026 games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

Canada assistant coach Pete DeBoer said during a Wednesday, December 3 appearance on SportsNet’s Real Kyper & Bourne radio show that the rink that the 2026 games plans to use is smaller than NHL standards.

“The ice surface, it looks like it’s going to be smaller than NHL rink standard by probably three or four feet,” he said. “I don’t understand how that happened.”

DeBoer, 57, added, “I don’t believe it’s a huge difference. But I believe there is a difference, and it’s on the smaller, not the bigger side.”

This will be the first Winter Olympics in which NHL players will be allowed to participate since 2014. Part of the deal between the NHL, NHL Players’ Association and International Ice Hockey Federation that allowed for the biggest names in the world to return to the Olympics was that the ice surface followed NHL standards.

One NHL player who has already been named to an Olympic team told ESPN that he does not anticipate the smaller ice being a problem.

“With the talent level there’s already going to be no time and space,” he said in a story published Wednesday. “The games are going to be incredible no matter what. Just give us a sheet of ice [and] we’ll be good.”

DeBoer’s statement comes a month after news broke that construction on the 16,000-seat Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, which is set to host hockey at the Olympics, was behind schedule, raising doubt over whether it will be ready when the 2026 games kick off in February.

DeBoer is an Ontario, Canada native and was head coach of the NHL’s Dallas Stars from 2022 to 2025. His criticism also came days after Andrea Francisi, the chief operations officer for the Milan Cortina Winter Games, told the Associated Press that “there is no plan B” if the arena is not ready — but he is confident that it will be.

“So necessarily we have to be able to organize the competition in an impeccable manner at Santagiulia,” he said in a story published Saturday, November 29.

The arena is scheduled to host its first Olympic contest — a women’s preliminary round matchup — on February 5, 2026, the day before the Opening Ceremony. Officials already moved a test event scheduled at the arena and new tests have been scheduled for January 9 to 11, leaving little wiggle room.

Test events aren’t just for trying out the ice. According to the AP, officials use such trial runs to test concession stands, bathrooms and everything that has never been used before in a brand new arena.

“There are daily updates in the sense that our team is there working every day,” Francisi added. “The companies which are involved with the building of the facility have sped up their work significantly.”

“We’re monitoring all that daily together with them, there’s great collaboration between us, we’re creating a coordinated plan between their work and our preparations and for the moment we’re healthily optimistic,” he said. “But 100 percent we’ll do it.”