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Our graphics team colleagues have scaled the rink sizes down so you can see how they compare.

To the naked eye, they may look, well, the same. But if you're skating on a hard surface at up to 30 kilometres per hour, a few feet can make a difference to your muscle memory.

But as Team Canada assistant coach Peter DeBoer said, players will now be preparing for the variation.

A quick recap of what we still don't know as it relates to hockey infrastructure at next year's Olympics.

A test event is planned for the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena on Jan. 9-11, but we don't know the plan for addressing any issues that might come up during those tests. It leaves less than a month to fix any problems before the first game in the arena on Feb. 5.

Officials with the Milano-Cortina organizing committee said earlier this year that there was no plan B, despite construction beginning quite late on this arena.

"We don't see a need for a backup plan because like we said, the work is going perfectly online with our timing," Milano Cortina 2026 CEO Andrea Varnier said in March.

It's being built by a private company, and organizers have said that uncertainty stemming from the pandemic held things up at the beginning of the project.

Finally, we still don't know the behind-the-scenes details around how officials decided to use the shorter and slightly wider ice, whether it has always been planned that way or if it was decided at some point due to a construction or design issue.

The IOC's news conference has wrapped up. As Karissa mentioned, Ducrey, the sports director, was pretty adamant the size of the rinks is no longer an issue, but didn't say why or how that came to be.

He and Coventry also repeated several times that the rinks — their size and construction delays — were not really discussed at the executive board meeting. Coventry did say, however, that there had been "offline" discussions about them.

Ducrey acknowledged the testing at the Santagiulia arena will take place later than planned, but said "it's just been delayed a couple of weeks so that we can have all the circumstances to test the venue."

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will be speaking to reporters at noon from Winnipeg. It's unclear what that news conference will be about, but we're expecting him to take questions about the Milano-Cortina Winter Games.

A small tidbit from the IOC executive board meetings over the last two days: four athletes who've previously been under the Canadian banner have been approved to change their sporting nationality.

The most notable is ice dancer Laurence Fournier Beaudry, who will now compete for France. She became a French citizen earlier this year and competes alongside partner Guillaume Cizeron. You can read more about her decision here.

The other three athletes are Davidson Henrique De Souza (Canada to Brazil, bobsleigh), Caoimhe Heavey (Canada to Great Britain, freestyle skiing) and Dylan Morse (Canada to Great Britain, luge).

Another question to IOC officials about ice size, and how the ice ended up being shorter and wider than NHL-sized ice.

Sports director Pierre Ducrey says any concerns around the ice size have been "successfully resolved" and there is no discussion about it anymore with the NHL, NHLPA, IIHF and other stakeholders.

There is a test event planned for the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena from Jan. 9-11. That's the main arena which is still under construction. It will try to replicate what the Olympic tournament will look like, with three games per day and spectators in the stands. Equipment is expected to be installed by the end of the year to put ice in.

A test event is underway at the secondary arena in Rho as we speak.

Officials say they're confident in the ice quality at Santagiulia because of how things are going with the test underway at Rho right now. But again, the ice doesn't exist at Santagiulia yet.

A test event one month before the Games is unusual. The first game will be played at Santagiulia on Feb. 5.

Responding to a journalist's question about the size of the ice to be used for hockey at the Olympics, the IOC's sports director Pierre Ducrey pointed to a statement released earlier this week from the International Ice Hockey Federation.

That statement said all involved (including the NHL and NHLPA) agree the shorter and slightly wider ice won't impact safety or game play.

I sent a follow-up question to the IIHF about whether these dimensions were planned all along, but was referred back to that statement. The IIHF says there will be "no further comments at this stage."

IOC executives including Coventry got an update from the Milano Cortina organizers over the last couple of days, but it doesn't sound like arena issues were discussed at those meetings.

"We're very impressed, very happy with everything that we're seeing and that we're hearing," Coventry said. "As all of you know as we get closer, we just need to keep our finger on the pulse."

IOC president Kirsty Coventry is now speaking. She's going over some new member appointments and noted that a lot of the discussion during the meeting over the past couple days in Lausanne has been about the upcoming Milano-Cortina Games.

The opening ceremony is 58 days away. Two weeks ago, Coventry was in Ancient Olympia for the flame lighting ceremony, which she called an "emotional … incredible moment."

Last Friday, the flame itself arrived in Rome.

The 2026 Winter Olympics will be Coventry's first as IOC president. Coventry is a former Olympic swimmer and was a cabinet minister in the Zimbabwean government from 2018 to 2023, overseeing youth, sport, recreation, art and culture.

Japan's Daigo Hotta, 19, said he also noticed the size of the rink when he skated on it.

Hotta, who has played in the U.S. Since his family relocated when he was five, said he could almost immediately tell the difference.

"I think this one is one of the smallest rinks I've ever played in," he said Tuesday. "The neutral zone's smaller. The space between the dots and the boards. I think everything's a little smaller than normal."

Andrea Francisi, head of games operations for Milan Cortina dismissed questions about the rink size, saying the ice surfaces are consistent with IIHF rules, according to The Associated Press.

"It is clear that the dimensions of the rink are different, but if you come to play in Europe, all the rinks have this type of size," Francisi said yesterday. "So somehow you have to adapt to this kind of dimension."

With the Games less than two months away, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Associated Press yesterday that only safety concerns from the ice surface could prevent the NHL from returning to Olympic participation for the first time since 2014 in Sochi.

He said Olympic officials are taking up the NHL's offer to use their experts to assist once the ice surface is scheduled to be laid in the coming weeks.

Japan's team captain Daigo Hotta referred to the ice as feeling "a little soft" during a pre-game skate, but firmed up by game time.

The ice is already in at Rho, which is playing host to the Group B Under-20 World Championship tournament this week.

"Obviously, if the players feel like the ice is unsafe, we're not going to play. It's as simple as that," Daly said.

Canadian men's hockey team GM Doug Armstrong on smaller-than-expected Olympic ice

The Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena in Milan, which has faced construction delays, is now expected to have an ice surface that's a few feet smaller than an NHL-sized rink.

An explainer on the shorter (and slightly wider) ice: The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) says the ice in Beijing in 2022 was also this size, which is consistent with IIHF regulations. NHLers also played on this size ice in Sweden earlier this season.

I asked Doug Armstrong, the GM of the Canadian men's Olympic team, about how it could affect roster selection. He said it will affect defencemen in particular, but shouldn't have a big impact on who goes to Italy.

The Canadian men's team leadership had marathon meetings this past weekend to discuss roster selection.

On the women's side, I spoke with two-time Olympic gold medallist and TSN hockey analyst, Cheryl Pounder, who said shorter ice means the game could be more physical. Shorter bursts of speed will be more important.

The Canadian women's team plays its final pre-Olympic games this week against the United States. The first game is tonight in Edmonton. You can read my primer here.

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