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Put aside poor conditions. Currently, there’s no ice.

With NHL players gearing up to return to the Olympics for the first time in more than a ten years, building work on the main hockey arena for the Milano Cortina Games is going down to the wire.

Local organizers announced on Wednesday that the primary trial competition for the 16,000-capacity Santagiulia facility originally planned for December has been relocated to a more compact arena – and that no new test event has been arranged yet.

This situation raises the prospect that there might 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 opening ceremony.

“It’s going to be very close to the beginning of the Olympics, the timeline is highly compressed. However, we were aware,” Milan-Cortina organizing body CEO Andrea Varnier said in a recent update.

The competition that was intended to test the Santagiulia ice was part of the U20 world championship from 8-14 December. This tournament has been moved to the Rho Fair hockey venue, which is being established inside a massive convention center on the outskirts of Milan and will stage secondary matches during the games.

Usually, freshly built Olympic facilities are tested at least the year before to hosting podium competitions. And with a large hockey arena, it’s not just about the playing surface and making sure that the playing surface is prepared and secure. It’s also about testing food outlets, bathrooms and everything else inside a newly constructed contemporary stadium.

This new facility, which is being constructed by a commercial firm, is scheduled to become Italy’s biggest covered stadium. For after the Olympics, it’s being eyed as a possible future host of the ATP Tour Finals tennis tournament.

Despite the delays and concerns, high-priced passes are already being sold for matches at the Santagiulia arena. Tickets for the men's championship game on 22 February – the final day of the Olympics – are priced at as much as €1,400 (more than $1,600). That’s more than the price of any other athletic competition at the Milano Cortina Games. Solely tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies cost more.

The return of NHL stars at the Olympics was announced last February, with the premier hockey organization allowing its players to compete in the Winter Olympics for the initial occasion since 2014 in Sochi.

Men's Olympic hockey competition is set to take place from 11-22 February. Women's event runs from 5-19 February.