‘It was chaos’: Beleaguered rink hosts 1st game at Olympics after construction delays

Spectators pose for a selfie outside Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena before Italy and France played a women's hockey game at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

MILAN — Don Moffatt was living his professional nightmare.

An ice guru tasked with getting the main rink ready for the NHL’s Olympic return at the Milan Cortina Games faced plenty of hurdles and an immovable deadline.

Thursday afternoon came as a big relief.

The much-maligned Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena — a headline-grabbing facility for all the wrong reasons because of construction delays and concerns over the playing surface’s quality — hosted its first game at the international sporting showcase just over 24 hours ahead of the opening ceremony.

“The biggest challenge I’ve ever seen in my life,” Moffatt said during the first intermission of Italy’s 4-1 victory over France in women’s play. “Almost like a horror story, but you just can’t possibly describe it.”

The 11,600-seat venue, which was reduced by 3,100 seats to ensure on-time completion, hosted a spirited crowd for the day’s early game after being a work site until very recently.

In some ways, it still is.

While the arena built with private funds looks great on the outside, on television and from the stands, there’s still the smell of fresh paint in the concourse. Plaster dust is present in staircases. A wrong turn could lead to a room filled with leftover building materials.

A small leak started in the media workroom ceiling, with Italy and France on the ice, which was fixed by three staff members.

“There’s a layer of paint … maybe they needed two or three coats,” said former NHL forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, who will suit up for France in the men’s tournament. “But they’re gonna tear out the ice when it’s over, so I’m OK with just one coat.”

The arena, which sits in a quiet neighbourhood about seven kilometres southeast of Milan’s city centre and its famed Duomo cathedral, will serve largely as a concert and event space post-Olympics after workers broke ground much later than initially anticipated.

That made for a compressed schedule where every day and hour had to count.

“It was a crazy, busy beehive of construction,” said Veronika Muhlhofer, event general manager at Santagiulia. “At some points, there were over 1,600 people working in here. It all had to happen at once, because all their timelines had to overlap.

“Somebody might have to work in the corner on drywall, but at the same time, the electrician is having to pull his wires, and at the same time, they’re already supposed to paint.”

Players on the ice Thursday spoke about an electric atmosphere at a rink with a significantly smaller scoreboard than NHL arenas and slightly tighter confines compared to North America’s usual dimensions of 200 by 85 feet.

“The ice is in, we have our benches, we have our locker rooms,” said Italian forward Kristin Della Rovere, who is from Hamilton. “That’s all that really matters to us.”

French defender Gabrielle de Serres said the ice was “fine” for the first game.

“A bit warm in there,” she said. “It’s a little sweaty on the ice. With all the (fans), it obviously gets warmer … a sunny day.”

Moffatt, who learned the ropes from retired NHL ice czar Dan Craig and was on site at the 2006 Olympics in Turin when organizers faced similar arena challenges, said there was an “inch of water and dirt” in the Zamboni entrance until a few weeks ago because it was the only way in or out of the building for construction crews.

“It was chaos,” he said.

Moffatt, who will aim to speak with the likes of Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon about the ice when they get to Milan, added that a test event earlier this month — instead of the customary year or more out from a Games — was another massive challenge.

“We were up against it,” he said. “If I stopped construction, then we’re not ready for the main event. I had to just do the best I could do. That’s so hard when you’re used to producing and doing the best. It drives you nuts.”

Moffatt, whose day job is with the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, said the athletes will notice a different, louder sound when their skates carve into the ice.

“There’s no refrigeration in the concrete,” he explained. “We had to put insulation down, and then the piping’s on top of that. There’s a little bit of air under there, and it’s a little bit soft.”

Bellemarre, who compared the “weird” noise to cutting up an outdoor rink, added that the configuration will also take some getting used to. France has already practised on the ice three times, while NHL-stacked teams like Canada and the United States won’t get in the building until Sunday.

“We’re lucky to be here that early,” Bellemare said. “The corners are very shallow. The puck goes very fast — much faster than normal. The big teams could be like, ‘This is just bad.’ But it’s gonna be the same for every team.

“I’ve got the Olympic rings looking at me every time I’m on the ice, so I’m not complaining about that. But it is different.”

Bellemare added that the criticism Santagiulia received was unfair.

“It was a little bit of clickbait,” he said. “On social media, it’s much more fun to focus on the negative than the positive. I’m soon to be 41. I’ve chased the Olympics for 24 years. Was I about to complain about the ice? That the locker room was not exactly like it was in the NHL?

“They could have put concrete down. I would just put shoes on to play.”

Moffatt, however, ensured there would be ice.

“Surreal when the puck dropped,” he said of Thursday’s curtain-raiser. “It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. To finally get this thing started was pretty cool.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 5, 2026.

Joshua Clipperton, The Canadian Press