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MILAN — They are golden again.
After an eight-year wait, after falling in Beijing and after Team USA slowly climbed to the mountaintop over the course of this four-year cycle, they finally reached the summit on Thursday with a 2-1 overtime win over Canada on Megan Keller’s golden goal that ended a classic, breathtaking game of hockey.
Fifty-seven minutes in, Team USA’s nightmare was playing out. Huge favorites coming in, the Americans were on the ropes, a largely hostile crowd bearing down on them as Canada leading 1-0.
That was when Hilary Knight — Team USA’s captain, their five-time Olympian who was staring down a shock silver medal in her final game at the Olympics — came through. Knight tipped in Laila Edwards’ shot from the top of the slot with just 2:04 to go in regulation and an extra skater on the ice, handing the United States the breakthrough it so desperately needed in the nick of time.
Four minutes and seven seconds into overtime, Keller skated in on a breakaway and poked her backhand through Ann-Renee Desbiens to end it.
Team USA streamed onto the ice in a giant group hug. Caroline Harvey’s helmet fell off. Keller was mobbed. Coach John Wroblewski put his hands in his face, tears in his eyes.
Canada stood on its bench, blank stares on their faces.
With the exceptions of 1998 and 2018, Canada has ruled women’s hockey ever since it became an Olympic sport at the ‘98 Nagano Games.
The U.S., though, just won Olympic gold with a roster of young guns. Some of their best players in this tournament — Abbey Murphy, Caroline Harvey, Edwards — are still in college.
Canada, by contrast, left some of its younger players at home and may have just seen 34-year-old Marie-Philip Poulin, long considered the best player in the world and their captain, play her last game in the Olympics. Poulin missed the first USA-Canada match at these Games with injury, and gutted through it to play in the knockouts.
Her presence wasn’t enough here, but Canada’s wealth of experience so nearly was.
To understand what happened here on Thursday, start with just how nervous the United States played for the game’s first 30 minutes. Six days after another American gold medal lock, Ilia Malinin, had fallen apart under the Olympic spotlight, the women of Team USA looked like they were doing the same.
A team that had looked so calm and so controlled for its first six games was tentative and jittery. They missed passes. They couldn’t handle the puck. And Canada, with an older, more experienced roster, looked right at home, making it 1-0 on Kristen O’Neill’s shorthanded goal off a two-on-one rush with Laura Stacey just 54 seconds into the second period.
It was the first time Team USA had trailed all tournament, the first goal they’d given up in 352:17 of game time, and that was where the score stood as it entered the last 20 minutes. Canada on the cusp of a shocking upset, the United States trying to wrap both hands around the match for the first time all night.
That they did, but it still seemed like it may not be enough.
Team USA owned the puck in the third period, after coach John Wroblewski flipped Joy Dunne back to the fourth line and Britta Curl-Salemme to the first — where both had played for most of the tournament. Canada, though, threw itself in front of every shot, and had a brick wall by the name of Ann-Renee Desbiens in net when that didn’t work.
It didn’t help, either, that on a few of Team USA’s best chances, they simply missed the net. Hannah Bilka sailed her shot way high in the second period off a backdoor feed with a partially empty net; Curl-Salemme whiffed on Tessa Janecke’s cross-crease feed early in the third.
It took until 17:56 of the third, and Knight, for a breakthrough. Once the Americans got it, they never looked back.
Inevitable as it looked that the Americans would cruise to gold, it couldn’t be that way. It wouldn’t have felt right, wouldn’t have been right.
That they got there all the same will make Thursday all the more meaningful.
It’s Team USA’s sport now. Get used to it.
English (US)