Women's Hockey
Team USA defeated Canada in Games 1 and 2 of the Rivalry Series, with less than three months to go before the women's tournament begins at the Milan-Cortina Olympics. Rebecca Villagracia / Getty Images
CLEVELAND and BUFFALO – Troy Ryan, Canada’s women’s hockey coach, was asked last week how his players avoid getting caught up in American Abbey Murphy’s sometimes …. let’s call it shift-disturbing antics.
“Sometimes people can get caught up in that side of the game and forget that she’s a pretty highly skilled player as well,” he said.
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That skill level was on full display Thursday night and Saturday night in the first two games of this four-game Canada-USA Rivalry Series. Murphy had a hat trick in USA’s 4-1 victory at Rocket Arena Thursday, then followed it up by forcing a turnover and assisting on Kelly Pannek’s winning goal during Saturday’s rematch at KeyBank Center – a 6-1 pounding of Canada.
Hats off to ya, Abbey Murphy 🧢🧢🧢#RivalrySeries, presented by @Discover pic.twitter.com/0jKbynUL3l
— USA Hockey (@usahockey) November 7, 2025
With the Feb. 5 start of the women’s tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan in less than 90 days, the chemistry between Murphy and Taylor Heise was obvious — despite the duo not consistently playing on the same line. On Thursday night, Heise assisted on all three of Murphy’s goals, two of which came on the power play, and scored one herself just 13 seconds after Canada took a 1-0 lead.
Murphy showed her appreciation for her former University of Minnesota teammate multiple times by pointing to Heise after cross-seam passes were placed perfectly onto a platter for her to bang home.
“She sees the ice in a whole different way,” Murphy said.
This looks familiar 🧐#RivalrySeries, presented by @Discover pic.twitter.com/RFUhBoIcoq
— USA Hockey (@usahockey) November 7, 2025
Heise said she doesn’t trust a lot of players to find that open space in the back door, but when Murphy finds those soft areas, “it’s hard to miss her.”
“She’s a special player,” Heise said.
Team USA coach John Wroblewski felt the Americans saw glimpses of Heise’s stardom at times during the World Championships, but were still waiting for her to really pop against Canada. Her “arrival time,” he said, is coming at a perfect time with the Olympics right around the corner.
Heise was in attack mode and basically creating empty-net goals for Murphy to fire into. Murphy has a knack for getting lost behind defenders and says she knows exactly where Heise wants her to be so she can look for those seams. And when she gets the puck in the slot, Murphy is automatic.
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“Murphy’s got a world-class shot,” Wroblewski said.
Murphy’s hat trick was the first for the U.S. women against their rivals since Hilary Knight had one in the 2023 world championships. Knight, the Americans’ captain, followed suit Saturday with another hat trick of her own.
“I told (Murphy), ‘You set the bar pretty high (Thursday),’” Knight, 36, said.
The final two games of the USA-Canada women’s rivalry series will be held Dec. 10 and 13 at Rogers Place in Edmonton. But first, here’s what we learned in Cleveland and Buffalo.
Canadian captain Marie-Philip Poulin didn’t mince words when she called the 4-1 and 6-1 losses a “s—ty two games” to start the Rivalry Series.
And while that might be true — from the defensive execution, missed passes and the 10-2 cumulative score — it’s really not something for the Canadians to panic about. At least not yet.
Consider Canada’s roster for a moment. Ryan and general manager Gina Kingsbury selected a 25-player roster for the first leg of the four-game pre-Olympic series and left a number of veterans home in favor of younger players and straight-up rookies.
Goalie Kayle Osborne, defender Kati Tabin and forwards Caitlin Kraemer and Hannah Miller all made their national women’s team debuts. Goalie Ève Gascon — who made last year’s worlds roster — made her first-ever start in Cleveland.
That left associate captains Jocelyne Larocque and Brianne Jenner at home, as well as two-time Olympic medalist Emily Clark, No. 1 goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens and 2025 PWHL No. 4 pick Nicole Gosling.
Save for the latter, who is in a battle for a depth spot on Canada’s blue line, the four veterans have nothing left to prove at this level. With a busy year between the national teams and PWHL, Ryan said they wanted to give some players a bit of a rest — and in turn give some young players a meaningful look.
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“We know what we’re getting from those players,” Ryan said.
Leaving Desbiens at home allowed Gascon and Osborne to battle it out for the No. 3 spot in Milan, with No. 2 Emerance Maschmeyer backing them up. On the other side of the ice, the U.S. started its No. 1 goalie Aerin Frankel on Thursday, then their No. 2 Gwyneth Philips on Saturday. It’s hard to imagine Canada giving up 10 goals if they had started their top two netminders.
Leaving forwards Jenner and Clark at home allowed Canada to give consistent shifts to Olympic hopefuls like Kraemer, Miller, Julia Gosling and Jennifer Gardiner.
Clarke, Ryan said, was also just given some time off after working back from offseason surgery all summer. She’s been cleared to play, but Canada wanted her to just get ready for Ottawa Charge camp.
Even top-of-the-lineup players like Ella Shelton and Sarah Nurse, who made the 25-player roster, weren’t forced into the lineup. Shelton left practice to get taped up and returned only for Ryan to tell her to sit the day out. Nurse was also resting after taking a hard puck in practice. They’re both fine, Ryan said, but why force it?
“Some things we are managing from giving people a little extra rest, to giving some people an opportunity in this short little window to see what they can do so we can make good decisions (with the roster),” he said.
Meanwhile, Team USA had all 25 players from its 2025 World Championship-winning roster in the lineup. Now, is it fair to worry that Canada has now lost four straight games to that U.S. roster? Sure. But in a vacuum, these games shouldn’t be cause for concern when Canada clearly used them as an audition.
Let’s also consider the fact that Canada’s largely veteran roster hasn’t played a real hockey game since the PWHL season ended in May. During Saturday’s game, TSN threw up a graphic that showed the U.S. roster – by way of their college contingent – had played 91 games already this season. The Canadians only had 27.
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On Thursday night, Murphy admitted it’s easier for the college players to get into a groove at these early rivalry games, given they actually get to play.
“They haven’t played games in six months, I don’t even know how they do that,” she said. “It’s a crazy offseason for them.”
Poulin wasn’t interested in using that as an excuse on Saturday night. But she also didn’t want to catastrophize the losses either, no matter how bad they were.
“They had a great start, they have a great team, but so do we,” said Poulin. “It’s going to be a battle.”
One of the most fun parts of the past week is the way players received their championship rings from winning the country’s 11th gold medal at the World Championships last spring thanks to Tessa Janecke’s overtime winner over Canada.
After hours, GM Katie Million arranged for the Americans to attend the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. A scavenger hunt was planned throughout the museum and it ended with a surprise: the presentation of the rings.
Ringing in a new season on a high note at the @rockhall 💍
Now it’s time to turn the page. The #RivalrySeries starts tonight in Cleveland, presented by @Discover! pic.twitter.com/4N9kBhsjfX
— USA Hockey (@usahockey) November 6, 2025
“Moments like that you don’t get to experience those a lot, so we didn’t really know what to expect when we were going there,” Murphy said. “That little scavenger hunt was really cool, and just a really cool team moment, for sure.”
One of the unique things about Ryan coaching the Canadians is that he also coaches the PWHL’s Toronto Sceptres, which also features USA hopefuls Savannah Harmon and Jesse Compher.
Ryan told a touching story about being at an airport last season when Compher got the call that she was going to be part of the World Championship team. Compher, ecstatic, called Ryan over to tell him and “that meant everything to me that she wanted to tell me.”
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Heading into her rookie PWHL season in 2024, Compher had been off the main roster since 2022, when she played in the Olympics and World Championships. Her rookie year was fine in the PWHL, but Compher’s sophomore breakout — with eight goals and 15 points when the roster was selected — certainly helped get her another deserved look.
“It’s an interesting dynamic juggling both hats,” Ryan said. “One of my goals with Toronto was to make sure Compher got back in the mix with Team USA. That’s almost crazy if you think about it, and then how do I convince her to trust that that’s legitimately one of my plans?
“But then there’s the joke, ‘I hope you come second.’”
It was hard to tell over the two games which power-play unit for Team USA was No. 1 or No. 2.
The first usually over the boards includes Knight, Alex Carpenter, Hannah Bilka, Megan Keller and Laila Edwards. The second includes Murphy, Heise, Kirsten Simms, Janecke and all-world skater Caroline Harvey. In Cleveland, Murphy had two power-play goals. Two days later in Buffalo, Knight had two of her own.
We’ll call it 1A and 1B units. But if the game was on the line, Wroblewski said he’d go with his veteran group.
“That’s what an Olympic team should be,” Wroblewski said. “We have 15 years of players that we can grab from. So we’re fortunate to have a lot of skill.”
0:12 – the smirk says it all 😏#RivalrySeries, presented by @Discover pic.twitter.com/DzuNxJ5XhS
— USA Hockey (@usahockey) November 9, 2025
Added Knight, “When we can move the puck around, it feels very natural. But we’ve got some really skilled players out there putting plays together.”
Hayley Scamurra couldn’t have written her homecoming in Buffalo on Saturday “any better.”
During warmups at the KeyBank Center, dozens of kids, and a Buffalo Bisons team — a youth team Scamurra played for growing up — crowded around the glass. Some kids held “Coach Scamurra” signs, a nod to her work with local teams over her career. She was surprised with starting the game – Scamurra has been on USA’s fifth line through Rivalry – and taking the ceremonial opening faceoff.
Then, in the third period, Scamurra made the game 5-1 off a slick, selfless drop pass by Heise.
Nasty, nasty stuff from Taylor Heise here pic.twitter.com/5hg27kgcrc
— Kyle Cushman (@Kyle_Cush) November 9, 2025
“It was absolutely incredible,” said Scamurra, who had around 100 friends and family in the crowd. “I could hear them all up there when my name was called. And then when I scored, they were extra loud. Just to have like that physical presence of them, the people who have been with me, through this whole journey and helping me get to this point and to celebrate it with them was just unbelievable.”
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Scamurra, 30, is very much in a battle for a roster spot on the 2026 Olympic team, with young players like Britta Curl-Salemme, Joy Dunne, Grace Zumwinkle and Compher pushing for spots in the bottom six. The goal could help, though scoring is not necessarily where Scamurra, a gritty defensive forward, brings most of her value.
After the game, Wroblewski made a point to shout out Scamurra’s preparation, dedication and athleticism, calling her “somebody we value so much in this program.”
After a homecoming of her own in Cleveland, Edwards popped with a three-point night and a highlight-reel goal in Buffalo.
In the third period, she made a great pinch, picking the puck off Canada’s No. 1 defender Renata Fast, then pulling the puck around a diving Micah Zandee-Hart to go bar down.
LAILA EDWARDS DOES IT ALL BY HERSELF 🚨🇺🇸#RivalrySeries pic.twitter.com/pT4zDGSdP7
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) November 9, 2025
It’s the kind of goal we’ve seen often from Edwards at the college level, especially when she’s playing her natural forward position. That she scored it for Team USA as a defender is a great sign of growth. Last year, when she first made the switch to defense ahead of the 2025 women’s worlds in Czechia, Edwards admitted to feeling a bit hesitant offensively.
Edwards is still working out the kinks of her new position, but it’s safe to say there was no hesitation in that goal on Saturday.
In the second period on Saturday, Renata Fast got an interference penalty when she shoved a United States defender onto goalie Gwyneth Philips. Philips’ mask popped off her head and Canadian winger Emma Maltais still fired a shot at the net, just missing Philips.
The officials conferenced but didn’t penalize her. Wroblewski wouldn’t bite when asked about the incident after the game and Philips told The Athletic that Maltais came up to her later in the game and apologized.
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The week leading up to Rivalry was a bit of a whirlwind for Team Canada. The group was in Montreal wrapping up its two-week training camp when they got the opportunity to go to Games 6 and 7 of the World Series in Toronto. (Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter also owns the PWHL, which is how the team was able to secure tickets.)
Was halting training camp the best move hockey-wise? “Probably not,” Ryan said. But with the PWHL changing the way the Olympic team is selected — typically athletes would live and train in Calgary together for six months ahead of the Games — Canada staff saw the games as a valuable team bonding experience.
In a 10-hour span, Hockey Canada’s logistics team reworked the entire team’s travel by organizing the trip to Toronto, then reworking the original flights from Montreal to Cleveland.
“It was impressive,” Ryan said.
What impressed Ryan most was the fact that the Dodgers made clear they had no problem with Hockey Canada players wearing Blue Jays attire, and Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten and senior VP of business strategy Royce Cohen, who are each on the PWHL’s governing board, personally hiked up to the 500 level of Rogers Centre to welcome the players and staff, thank them for coming and ensure that everything was perfect.
Hockey Canada then traveled to Cleveland and added a Monday practice to, as Ryan joked, wash out the beer (or two) some players may have had at the World Series. So Thursday’s game in Cleveland was actually the fourth consecutive day the team was on the ice. That likely led to tired legs and a welcomed day off Friday as Hockey Canada bussed to Buffalo for Saturday’s game.
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