Chris Johnston

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.

I'm pretty optimistic.

Yeah.

I mean, they just got that ice like last weekend was the first games ever played on it.

Naturally, when you're making ice, there's kind of a process to that, you know, but they have the guy Don Moffitt that's making the ice there makes the ice for the Colorado Avalanche.

So, I mean, they've got a lot of expertise on the ground and,

You know, if you just take the arena ball and ignore the scoreboard small and all that stuff, it looks like a hockey rink.