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Forget about poor conditions. Currently, there’s no ice.

As NHL athletes gearing up to return to the Olympic Games for the first time in over a decade, construction on the primary hockey venue for the Milano Cortina Games is going down to the wire.

Officials announced on Wednesday that the main trial competition for the 16,000-seat Santagiulia arena that was scheduled for December has been moved to a smaller venue – and that no new test event has been scheduled yet.

The issue creates the possibility that there may not be a match held in the primary venue until the puck is dropped for the women’s preliminary round at the Olympics on 5 February – 24 hours before the inaugural event.

“The timeline will be very close to the start of the games, the schedule is highly compressed. But we knew that,” Milan-Cortina organizing body CEO Andrea Varnier stated in a recent update.

The event that was supposed to evaluate the Santagiulia ice was a segment of the under-20 world championship from 8-14 December. That event has been moved to the Rho Fair hockey location, which is being established inside a giant exhibition hall on Milan’s outskirts and will host lesser games during the Olympics.

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

This new facility, which is being constructed by a private company, is scheduled to become the nation's biggest covered stadium. For after the Olympics, it’s being eyed as a possible upcoming venue of the ATP Tour Finals tennis event.

In spite of the delays and concerns, high-priced tickets are already being purchased for events at the Santagiulia arena. Tickets for the men's championship final on 22 February – the final day of the games – are going for as much as €1,400 (more than $1,600). This exceeds the price of any other athletic competition at the Milan-Cortina Games. Solely tickets for the inaugural and final events cost more.

The return of NHL players at the Olympics was revealed in February of last year, with the world’s top hockey league allowing its athletes to compete in the Winter Olympics for the first time since 2014 in Sochi.

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