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

With NHL athletes preparing to return to the Olympic Games for the initial occasion in over a ten years, construction on the primary hockey arena for the Milano Cortina Games is going down to the wire.

Local organizers announced on Wednesday that the main trial competition for the 16,000-seat Santagiulia arena originally planned for December has been relocated to a smaller venue – and that no additional trial has been scheduled yet.

This situation creates the possibility that there may not be a match held in the primary venue until the puck is dropped for the women's initial games at the Olympics on 5 February – one day before the inaugural event.

“The timeline will be very close to the beginning of the games, the schedule is very tight. But we knew that,” Milan-Cortina local organizing committee CEO Andrea Varnier stated recently.

The event that was supposed to test the Santagiulia playing surface was a segment of the under-20 world championship from 8-14 December. This tournament has been moved to the Rho Fair hockey location, which is being established inside a massive convention center on the outskirts of Milan and will host secondary matches during the games.

Typically, freshly built Olympic facilities are trialled at least the year before to holding podium competitions. And with a large hockey arena, it’s not only about the ice and making sure that the playing surface is prepared and safe. It’s also about checking food outlets, bathrooms and everything else inside a newly constructed contemporary arena.

This new facility, which is being built by a commercial firm, is scheduled to become Italy’s biggest indoor arena. For after the Olympics, it’s being considered as a potential upcoming venue of the ATP Tour Finals tennis event.

Despite the postponements and worries, expensive passes are already being sold for events at the Santagiulia venue. Tickets for the men's championship game on 22 February – the final day of the games – are going for as much as €1,400 (over $1,600). This exceeds the price of any other sports event at the Milan-Cortina Games. Only tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies are priced higher.

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

Men's Olympic hockey competition is set to run from 11-22 February. The women’s event runs from 5-19 February.