Greg Wyshynski
Multiple Authors
The 2026 Olympic women’s hockey tournament ended in as epic a fashion as anyone could have imagined.
After trailing 1-0 much of the way Thursday, the United States tied the score with just over two minutes remaining to send the game to overtime on a goal by Hilary Knight.
Early in the extra session, Megan Keller made a slick move to score the golden goal, earning a 2-1 victory for the U.S. and the country’s third gold medal in women’s hockey history.
But those are just the high points of the story. How did the game play out for both sides? Who was the player of the game? And how does this contest set things up moving forward for one of the biggest rivalries in the world of sports?
More: Top moments from the game | Game recap
Why Team USA won
Being the best in the world is not about going undefeated heading into the gold medal game or outscoring opponents 31-1, which is what Team USA accomplished in its previous six Olympic tournament games.
Being the best in the world is about finding a way to win when things aren’t clicking and the opponent isn’t relenting. When there’s enough pressure to turn a lump of coal into a diamond — which is actually a pretty good description of how the Americans won the gold medal over Canada.
The Americans entered the game as the heaviest favorites they’d ever been in the Olympic version of this storied rivalry. DraftKings had them not only as a minus-485 favorite but as a 2.5-goal favorite on the puck line, which was unheard of in a game against Canada at this stage. But heavy is the head that has already been crowned.
The Canadians sent this game to overtime by fulfilling the one requirement they had coming into this matchup against the Americans: eliminate any feelings of “here we go again” vs. their archrivals, who had beaten them in seven straight games including a 5-0 thumping in group play.
Kristin O’Neill’s short-handed goal 54 seconds into the second period punctured Team USA’s veneer of invincibility. Before you could say “Hayley Wickenheiser,” these two teams fell back into their traditional Olympic roles: Canada looking unflappable, the United States gripping its sticks during scoring chances when its passes actually connected.
SHORTHANDED GOAL. 💪
It’s Kristin O’Neill who gives Canada the lead. pic.twitter.com/vapn6D28Hj
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 19, 2026
The Americans couldn’t find their legs. They were undisciplined, taking three penalties, including one for too many players on the ice in the first period, which is a clear mental mistake. They would generate chances in spurts but nothing close to the waves of offense they unleashed in their previous tournament games. If it weren’t for goalie Aerin Frankel (30 saves), Canada probably would have found that second goal to break the Americans’ will.
And then, after 57 minutes and 56 seconds of championship hockey, the Team USA many expected to see against Canada showed up.
Hilary Knight’s deflection goal with Frankel pulled was the encapsulation of what makes this team special: a cross-generational mix of star talent, a perfect recipe for hockey success. Laila Edwards, 22, took the shot that Knight, 36, knocked home to send the game to overtime.
TIE GAME! TIE GAME! THE CAPTAIN! pic.twitter.com/Fg9ycbZ2BY
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 19, 2026
Knight is the standard-bearer for U.S. women’s hockey, setting the record for most goals and points by an American in the Olympics with her third goal of the Milan Cortina Games. Edwards, the first Black woman to play for the U.S. Olympic hockey team, was the young player who idolized her.
“She’s one of the biggest reasons I keep playing hockey,” Edwards told USA Today Sports. “And she’s the reason I wore my number in youth hockey, No. 21.”
Then, in the 3-on-3 overtime, it was forward Taylor Heise, 25, playing in her first Olympics after being cut from the Beijing team, sliding a perfect pass from behind her own goal through the blue and red lines to Megan Keller, 29, who already had gold and silver Olympic medals to her credit.
Then it was all Keller, with an incredible move to the net and a backhand under goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens’ pad.
A GOLDEN GOAL FOR GOLD! pic.twitter.com/oLDfElGnI9
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 19, 2026
It could be argued that Team USA played great hockey for approximately 6:11 in this game against Canada. That was all the time it needed to overcome its nerves, its deficit and its gutsy opponent to win gold for the third time in Olympic history.
Why Canada lost
Canada lost because it couldn’t score a second goal before Team USA could.
This isn’t to say that the Canadians couldn’t have won in overtime, because 3-on-3 is a chaotic crapshoot. In fact, they had some chances. There probably wasn’t an American fan watching who didn’t partially expect captain Marie-Philip Poulin — Team USA’s greatest tormentor, who had missed the group play game due to injury — to twist the knife one more time with an OT goal.
But given how both teams were playing during regulation, if Canada had turned one of those Aerin Frankel saves into a goal … if Canada had converted one of those power plays … if Canada had just found a way to make it 2-0 before Hilary Knight found a way to make it 1-1, it would probably be admiring another gold medal draped in a maple leaf flag right now.
This was not a great tournament for the Canadian women by their lofty standards. The Americans plastered them 5-0 in group play, and Canada beat the Swiss by just a 2-1 margin in the semifinals. With that performance, and having lost seven straight games to Team USA, the Canadians were understandably considerable underdogs in the final.
But they were also still representing Canada. As Brianne Jenner said before the game: “We’ve been there before. We know how to do it. It’s just a matter of us showing up.”
They were still the team with 16 previous gold medals. Poulin has three of them, winning her first in Vancouver 2010. Natalie Spooner, Erin Ambrose and Jenner each have two of them from Sochi and Beijing. It’s a group that cared neither about style points nor goal differential at the Olympics. It’s a group that was believable when it said the previous losses to the United States weren’t haunting Canada.
Renata Fast, another previous gold medalist, told Sportsnet that “it hasn’t been the easiest path, but this group has a ton of fight in them. … It’s going to be a bloodbath.”
From Ann-Renée Desbiens (another gold medal winner) out to the skaters, the Canadians played with a veteran’s poise and an underdog’s psychology. The result is no doubt devastating, both in the manner in which it happened and also because of who defeated them. But what a truly admirable effort from a team many (incorrectly) had written off as an invited guest to the Americans’ coronation.
Gold medal game MVP: Aerin Frankel
Knight tied the game. Keller won it.
But neither of those things would have happened without 30 saves from goalie Aerin Frankel. She was outstanding in the scoreless first period and kept the U.S. in the game while the American skaters struggled in front of her. She cleaned up their mistakes and gave them every chance to get back into the game — perhaps her best stop was on Canada star Sarah Fillier in the second period.
Frankel gave up two goals in the entire tournament. Unlike many of her teammates, she saved the best for last — and that’s not all she saved.
State of the rivalry
During the women’s hockey Olympic era, which started in 1998, there has never been a larger gap between these two rivals.
Team USA has now won eight straight games against Canada, sweeping at worlds, in the Rivalry Series and now at the Olympics. This was the first time the Americans entered a showdown against Canada in which a gold medal win was expected, not just hoped for. That’s an odd place to be for the U.S., as evidenced by its not-ready-for-prime-time performance for nearly three periods, but in the end the Americans didn’t fumble their chance.
This was a special mix of players: veterans such as Hilary Knight, Kendall Coyne Schofield and Megan Keller mixing perfectly with the next wave of players including defender Caroline Harvey, forward Abbey Murphy and Laila Edwards. The youth movement is a credit to the foundation those previous generations of U.S. players laid down to help women’s hockey grow, from their international success to the professional leagues they helped create that encouraged young athletes to grab a stick for the first time.
It’s also a credit to the investment and support from USA Hockey to turn the faucet open on that pipeline of talent from around the U.S. and then develop those players into champions. But for the U.S. and Canada, it’s a time of transition before the 2030 Games. Knight has already said this is her last Olympics. Coyne Schofield turns 34 in May. For Canada, Natalie Spooner is 35 and Poulin is 34.
The Americans have a stronger base of young talent than Canada does. There has been some concern north of the border about Canada’s pipeline during the lopsided past couple of years in this rivalry. Is this just talent development being cyclical, or has the U.S. women’s hockey program finally surpassed the Canadians in depth of talent and international success?
The gold around the Americans’ necks in Italy, after dominating Canada for the better part of two years, gives at least some credence to the latter theory.
Leave a Reply