Women's Hockey
2026 Olympic
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The Canadians and Americans, who will meet in a gold medal showdown on Thursday at the Olympics, have a long history of enmity. Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; AbelImages / Getty, Bruce Bennet / Getty, Martin Rose / Getty, Toronto Star / Getty
MILAN – When women’s hockey made its debut at the 1998 Olympics, the rival Canadians and Americans didn’t like each other — so much so that even a shared elevator ride could get a little tense.
“I would just stand super strong and I wouldn’t talk,” said U.S. Olympic gold medalist and Hockey Hall of Fame defender Angela Ruggiero. “You’re always trying to intimidate a little.”
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Canada and the U.S. played each other over a dozen times before the Nagano Games. More often than not, they stayed in the same hotels.
Back then, the relationship between the players was so unfriendly that some Americans, like captain Cammi Granato, wouldn’t even step foot in an elevator with a Canadian.
“I was a rookie in that era so that’s what I was taught to do,” said Ruggiero. “You don’t interact.”
Over nearly three decades, the Canada-USA rivalry has been among the best in sport, with the two sides in a near-constant battle for women’s hockey supremacy. The cross-border rivals have combined to win every Olympic gold medal — Canada has a 5-2 edge — and all 24 Women’s World Championships.
“They were our biggest rival and in our way to get a gold medal,” said Cassie Campbell-Pascall, who won three Olympic medals for Canada between 1998 and 2006. “It was a real, strong dislike.”
The relationship off the ice has evolved along with the sport at large. Canadians and Americans now play together in college and in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, which launched in January 2024.
But that doesn’t mean the rivalry is any less heated on the ice. And despite the frequency in which the two sides meet, the games always deliver.
“I played for the Toronto Furies (in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League), so I got to know some of the Canadian girls,” said American defender Megan Bozek. “But when you played it was friends off, because you are fighting blood, tooth and nail to make sure that you are going to win that game.”
The Canadian and American men got a ton of attention for their three fights in nine seconds at the 4 Nations Face-Off last year. But the feud between the women is so intense that they’ve even fought in exhibition games.
The rivalry will once again take center stage on Thursday in the Olympic gold medal game. The unbeaten U.S. team enters as the heavy favorite, while Canada suffered an ugly loss to the Americans in the preliminary round. Canada’s women’s hockey tournament has been punctuated by adversity: Their first game was postponed because of a norovirus outbreak on Team Finland, and then they lost their captain and best player to injury.
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Marie-Philip Poulin returned in the quarterfinals and broke the all-time Olympic scoring record in the semis. Despite the preliminary result — Canada’s worst loss at the Olympics since 1998 — expect a heated battle on Thursday with a gold medal on the line.
To get you set up, here’s just a taste of the most heated, tense and dramatic moments of the Canada-USA rivalry.
By the time women’s hockey (finally) made its Olympic debut, there was already almost a decade of history between Team Canada and Team USA.
An unofficial women’s world hockey championship was held in 1987, followed by the first International Ice Hockey Federation event in 1990 — where Canada infamously wore pink jerseys in an effort to promote the tournament. Canada dominated those early years with superstars like Angela James, Geraldine Heaney and Stacey Wilson, winning all four World Championships leading into the 1998 Olympics.
“In Canada there was this expectation that we were just going to win,” said Jayna Hefford, a five-time Canadian Olympian. “There was this overbearing pressure and weight on us.”
The Americans knew they had to play their best to knock off Canada. Even in pre-tournament games, which got feisty early and often. Campbell-Pascall remembers getting her first 10-minute misconduct after some extra-curriculars with an opponent. Because very few Canadians and Americans knew or played with each other back then – women’s hockey wasn’t even an NCAA sport until 2001 – the relationship between players was “just pure rivals and enemies,” said Hefford.
“It was pretty intense in 1998,” she said. “But that was all we knew. That was the state of the game at that time.”
Throughout the pre-Olympic tour, Team USA fully bought into their underdog mentality, despite the closing gap between the two teams, and by all measures it worked.
In Nagano, the Americans scored six unanswered goals to beat Canada 7-4 in the preliminary round.
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“That’s what helped us win the final,” said Ruggerio. “Because it shaped our mindset to, ‘Oh we can actually do this.’”
Tensions flared in the postgame handshake line. After the game, Canada coach Shannon Miller accused a U.S. player – later revealed to be Sandra Whyte – of making a remark about Danielle Goyette’s recently deceased father. Whyte denied saying anything about Goyette’s father.
“There was a lot of little stuff that year that was poking the fire (and testing) where the line is of a rivalry.”
The Americans ultimately won the first Olympic gold medal, sparking rapid growth for the sport in the United States. But the rivalry was far from settled.
Hayley Wickenheiser skated off the ice just moments after winning Canada’s first Olympic gold medal in Salt Lake City. Her teammates were still celebrating their 3-2 victory over the Americans over her shoulder when Wickenheiser delivered a message, live on the CBC, into living rooms across Canada.
“You know what?” Wickenheiser said in an iconic interview with Don Cherry. “The Americans had our flag on their floor in the dressing room.”
She took a breath and fixed her stare directly toward the camera: “And now I want to know if they want us to sign it.”
With one soundbite, the on-ice rivalry became an international incident. Media coverage led to a joint investigation between USA Hockey and the Canadian Hockey Association, which became Hockey Canada.
“We just lost, we’re devastated and we’re getting asked by every single reporter, did you stomp on their flag?” said Ruggerio. “I remember turning to Cammi Granato going, what are they talking about?”
U.S. players vehemently denied the rumor and an investigation concluded that U.S. players did not desecrate a Canadian flag.
“This is a case of false information being circulated by an unidentified third party,” USA Hockey executive director Doug Palazzari said at the time. “There is no question there is a healthy rivalry between the two teams, but there is also great mutual respect.”
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As the story goes, Campbell-Pascall, who was Canada’s captain at the time, had heard from an arena attendant that the Americans had a flag in their locker room. In the team’s final push for gold, she shared the story.
“I know now that it was not true,” said Campbell-Pascall. “But it was something we used for motivation that I never thought would get out of our locker room.”
Over 20 years later, Ruggerio still gets fired up about the rumor, but she admits the motivational tactic worked. Leading into the Salt Lake City games, the U.S. was the better of the two teams, beating Canada in eight straight pre-tournament matchups.
“Looking back, it’s genius,” she said. “You materialized energy in the locker room over some completely bulls— made-up garbage.”
While the Olympics typically offer up the biggest moments in the Canada-USA rivalry, tensions flare on smaller stages with lower stakes, too.
Case in point: the final few minutes of an October 2013 exhibition game, the first of six meetings in the lead-up to the 2014 Olympics, erupted in a line brawl.
The fight started when U.S. forward Monique Lamoureux-Morando clipped Canadian goalie Shannon Szabados in the crease with just over three minutes left in the game, which got the attention of Tessa Bonhomme and Courtney Kessel (née Birchard).
“She gave her a forearm shiver and I remember going to chase her down and Birch was like ‘I got her,’” said Bonhomme. “That type of play was the stuff that we detested about the American team and the Lams were top-notch best at really getting under our skin with that.”
Lamoureux-Morando’s twin sister, Jocelyne, and Kelli Stack jumped into the mix. Bonhomme followed. And soon, all 10 skaters were in the melee. According to Bonhomme, even Szabados wanted in, but nobody would bite.
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It had been a rough stretch for Canada, losing four of the previous five World Championships to the Americans. In 2013, Team USA beat Canada on home soil at the women’s worlds in Ottawa. After the win, American players ripped a Nike advertisement that read “Hockey Is Ours” off the rink boards and posed for a picture.
So, at the October exhibition game in Burlington, Vermont, it didn’t take much for things to escalate.
“We were obviously a bit frustrated,” said Bonhomme. “So it was kind of a way of putting our foot down.”
Back then, before the PWHL, Canadian and American players would have months-long training camps to try to make an Olympic roster. Pre-tournament games between the two countries provided an opportunity for players to show they belonged in the games that matter most — against their biggest rival. Sometimes that meant chirping at the bench or getting into the mix.
“You were fighting for a spot either on that next game roster or to be on the Olympics,” said Bozek. “So every single time we got to put on the jersey, which wasn’t a lot, it was meaningful, it was powerful.”
Two months later, in North Dakota, another fight broke out at a particularly tense time for both teams. Later that night, Team USA would name its Olympic roster. Meanwhile, Canada was still reeling from the bombshell that its coach, Dan Church, had resigned less than two months before the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Games.
All that off-ice drama boiled over into the game when 22-year-old Canadian Brianne Jenner laid a late hit on Josephine Pucci. When Jenner got out of the penalty box two minutes later, Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson went right after her, prompting another full line-brawl between Canadian rookies – like Melodie Daoust, Jocelyne Larocque and Vicky Bendis – and some of Team USA’s stars, including the Lamoureux twins, Hilary Knight, Gigi Marvin and Kacey Bellamy.
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“We were young kids on the team just wanting to prove ourselves to the vets that we would do anything for the team,” said Jenner. “Good memories.”
The 2014 Sochi gold medal game was actually pretty uneventful, with Team USA holding a 2-0 lead early in the third period. The final four minutes were what makes the game one of the wildest ever played at the Olympics.
All it took was a lucky goal from Jenner that deflected off a U.S. defender to cut the lead in half to give the Canadians a spark.
“All of a sudden you could feel the negative energy coming from the Americans,” said Hefford, who was playing in her fifth and final Olympics. “You started hearing their coaches yelling, and started seeing players tighten up a little bit and getting antsy.”
With 90 seconds left, and Canada pressing in the offensive zone, a linesperson bumped into Canadian defender Catherine Ward, knocking her out of position. American Kelli Stack got to the loose puck and shot into the empty Canadian net hoping to secure a U.S. gold.
The puck only traveled down the ice for about four seconds. But it felt like an eternity.
“It was very stressful watching a puck slowly roll towards your net (to) shatter your dreams,” said defender Lauriane Rougeu. “I was on the bench just praying.”
2010 Olympic hero Marie-Philip Poulin was on the ice.
“I don’t want to say what I was thinking,” she says now. “But I was like, there’s no way it’s going to end like this.”
The puck hit the post. Poulin scored 31 seconds later – with under one minute in regulation – to force overtime. The Americans were shell-shocked.
“Being on the ice for that and watching the puck not go in, you’re just like ‘what is going on?” said Bozek. “Then I remember there was a bit of panic amongst the staff. Who do we put out? What do we do?”
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Canadian players credited coach Kevin Dineen for his calm and confident demeanor, even when they were trailing late in the game. “He played such a big role in that comeback,” said Jenner.
Poulin scored again in the extra frame for arguably the most dramatic win in women’s hockey history, cementing her status as the most clutch player in the world.
“You couldn’t script that,” said Hefford. “I think all of us, the Americans too, were all in a little bit of shock at the moment about what occurred.”
As is customary in the Canada-USA rivalry, the Pyeongchang gold medal game was a tight contest through regulation. Overtime solved nothing either. For the first time in Olympic history, the women’s final went to a shootout, which was an exceptional display of skill.
Canada’s Melodie Daoust pulled off a “Forsberg” goal on goalie Maddie Rooney — with Peter Forsberg himself in the arena serving as a television analyst. Then came Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson’s triple-deke — she and her coach dubbed the move “Oops, I did it again” — that had Shannon Szabados, the best goalie in the world, uncharacteristically falling in her crease.
“How do you even think to do that move,” said Bozek, who had been cut from the 2018 roster along with forward Alex Carpenter.
“I was just as in awe as everyone else was in the rink,” said Rooney in a USA Hockey video. “It just really gave me, and I know the bench, a ton of energy going into that final save.”
In the final round of the shootout, Canada sent out veteran forward Meghan Agosta, who had scored in her second-round attempt. This time, Rooney shut the door to seal the U.S. victory, 20 years after Team USA first won gold in 1998.
“That one still hurts,” said Rougeau. “It’s a bigger stage at the Olympics. I don’t think it should end in a shootout, but you know people will say ‘well, you were on the losing side, so of course you’re gonna say that.’”
The game later won the 2018 ESPY Award for ‘Best Game,’ beating out the Super Bowl and the World Series.
“We knew it was going to be crazy,” American star Kendall Coyne Schofield told reporters at the time. “It always is when we play them.”
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Hailey Salvian is a staff writer for The Athletic covering women’s hockey and the NHL. Previously, she covered the Calgary Flames and Ottawa Senators and served as a general assignment reporter. Follow Hailey on Twitter @hailey_salvian
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