MILAN — The game counted only in these Olympics’ ground-play standings, not for the gold medal. But in a highly anticipated meeting of the only two countries ever to win an Olympic gold medal in women’s hockey, the U.S. overpowered Canada by scrapping and scoring its way to a 5-0 rout in an early gold-medal-game preview.
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The U.S. needed fewer than four minutes to score first, fewer than two periods to jump to a 4-0 lead, and fewer than six days of competition at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics to assert themselves as the tournament’s most dominant team, and gold-medal favorite, thus far.
Their three most-recent meetings in the Olympic final, and two most-recent showdowns for the world championship all were decided by a single goal. Four of those five games required either overtime or a shootout.
Yet these nations' most recent meetings, last fall, suggested the U.S. had pulled ahead of its neighbor and rival. The U.S. swept a four-game series in between November and December while outscoring Canada by a combined score of 24-7.
Tuesday's performance appeared to show those games weren't an outlier.
"They're always going to bring it, so can't be cocky," Rory Guilday of the U.S. said. "But we have confidence."
Canada, by its own admission, did not.
"It didn't look like we had a ton of confidence in our decision-making or the plays that we made," Canada coach Troy Ryan said. "And I'm not saying it is confidence, that's just what it looks — it looks a little bit scattered."
"It's a tough one, right?" he added. "Because we know the stories you guys will write, so that's part of it, too, right? Like we got to make sure we're managing some of the outside noise. ... We just got to be better. And it's like sometimes it can be difficult from a coaching perspective, because there's so many areas, right? There's so many areas you need to improve. So, we'll just pick a few and try to pick away at those."
Their overwhelming presence as favorites was difficult to overstate; of all 31 major titles in the history of organized women’s hockey, including both world championships and Olympics, the U.S. and Canada had won each and every one.
"I mean, you can't deny it, there's extra, there's more intensity" to facing Canada, said U.S. star Laila Edwards. "And I think we rise to the occasion."
The U.S. entered Tuesday having outscored its first three opponents of the Olympics 15-1; Canada, meanwhile, had scored nine times in two games and allowed just one goal.
"I got the question like, 'Do you want to have closer games with European teams and teams like this?'" said Taylor Heise of the U.S. "But we want to be dominant. We're here to win a gold medal, at the end of the day."
Within 3 minutes, 45 seconds, Caroline Harvey had scored, on assists from Haley Winn and Hilary Knight, the U.S. star who entered the game tied for the U.S. all-time goal-scoring record at the Olympics.
Within minutes, Joy Dunne, one of the youngest U.S. players, got into a scrap in front of one goal. Soon, Guilday and Canada’s Laura Stacey began pushing and shoving before being broken up. It was a pugnacious start, but only the U.S. had the production to show for it.
Late in the first period, Abbey Murphy skated near Canada’s goal to save a long pass, then flipped it behind her without looking to Hannah Bilka for a 2-0 lead. The audacious assist led to reactions of “ooh” that were audible beyond the blaring in-arena soundtrack of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” Bilka would score a second goal later.
"I just kind of let [the pass] go and knew that kid was going to finish it," Murphy said.
Team USA's win over Canada came with an asterisk, however. Canada’s Marie-Philip Poulin did not play after leaving a win the previous day with an undisclosed lower-body injury.
Poulin, 34, has scored in every gold medal game in the last four Winter Olympics and is so revered that U.S. coach John Wroblewski has described her as still the best player in the world. Ryan, the Canadian coach, said he was "optimistic" Poulin would return later in the tournament.
Yet when Canada fell behind 4-0 late in the second period, all Poulin could do was watch, betraying no emotion and with her chin in her hand when shown on a videoboard.
"I guess the pressure kind of got to us a little," Canada's Julia Gosling said. "But next time around, we're going to be confident and, yeah, really take it to them."
