Chris Johnston

It was pretty quick there and back and fair amount of work, probably not as much play or fun as you might imagine, but it was cool to get a sense of the city ahead of the Olympics and then obviously to be one of the first people, I guess, in our business anyway, inside that arena, getting a feel for what is and isn't happening there.

It's not going to be up to a standard you'd probably expect in an AHL behind the scenes rink, you know, let alone an NHL one.

But I still think there's going to be enough there for them to play.

And given how badly we know NHL players have wanted to get back to the Olympics and get back on that level, I mean, I certainly expect the tournament to go ahead and

At the end of the day, the men's tournament runs February 11th to 22nd.

It's not even two full weeks.

I think that you won't hear any complaining publicly anyway once the guys get over there.

I think that they understand it's not going to be what they're used to, but that the stakes are pretty high and that this is going to be a level of hockey that most of them have been dying to get back to for a decade.

What they told me is that, and this is people from the local organizing committee, is that they've been behind since the beginning.

And the arena is being built by a private individual.

It's not public funding.

And one thing they said to me is they got going a little bit late because

in part because of COVID timing that, you know, between when they got the Olympics in 2019 awarded to them, and obviously they didn't get shovels in the ground until spring 2023, that sort of the world had changed and maybe some of the financial picture had changed.

So, you know, it sounds like they really just got going late and haven't been able to get ahead of it and catch up.

And so that seemed to be the main issue.

And then, you know, beyond that, there's just sort of this idea that,

that Italians are pretty laid back and that, you know, they always get it done in the end, but they maybe aren't, you know, as get up and go as some other countries.

I mean, I can't speak to that myself specifically, but I definitely heard that.

I mean, that sentiment was in the air a lot that maybe they just do things on their own schedule here.

And so right now they're doing a lot of work to get it done.