MILAN -- There is no backup plan if the main ice hockey arena for the Milan-Cortina Winter Games is not ready on time.

Construction on the arena that is set to welcome NHL players back to the Olympics for the first time in more than a decade is behind schedule and going right down to the wire.

A test event at the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena -- the new 16,000-seat venue that is being built on the outskirts of Milan -- had to be moved, and new ones won't be until Jan. 9-11.

"There is no Plan B," Andrea Francisi, the chief Games operations officer for Milan-Cortina, told The Associated Press on Saturday.

"So necessarily we have to be able to organize the competition in an impeccable manner at Santagiulia."

The first Olympic game at the main hockey arena is the women's preliminary roun

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