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The 2026 Olympic women’s hockey tournament ended in as epic a fashion as anyone could have imagined.
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After trailing 1-0 for much of the game, 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
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 on Thursday.
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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’s already been crowned.
Canada sent this game to overtime by fulfilling the one requirement that it had coming into their matchup against the Americans: Eliminate any feelings of “here we go again” vs. their archrivals, who had beaten them in seven straight games and thumped them 5-0 in group play.
Kristin O’Neill’s shorthanded 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 their sticks during scoring chances, when their 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 that included a “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 wasn’t for goalie Aerin Frankel (30 saves), Canada probably finds 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 perfect encapsulation of that makes this team special: a cross-generational mix of star talent, a perfect recipe for hockey success. Lalia 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’s 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. It was all the time they needed to overcome their nerves, their deficit and their gutsy opponent to win gold for the third time in Olympic history.
Canada lost because they couldn’t score the gold medal game’s second goal before Team USA could.
This isn’t to say that the Canadians couldn’t have won in overtime, because the 3-on-3 is a chaotic crapshoot. In fact, they had some chances. There probably wasn’t an American fan watching that didn’t partially expect captain Marie-Philip Poulin — Team USA’s greatest tormentor, who missed their 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 Frankel saves into a goal … if Canada could have 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, they’re probably admiring another gold medal draped in a maple leaf flag right now.
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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, they were understandably considerable underdogs in the gold medal final.
But they were also still Canada. As Brianne Jenner stated 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 medal winners. Poulin has three of them, winning her first in Vancouver 2010. Natalie Spooner, Erin Ambrose and Brianne Jenner have two of them from Sochi and Beijing. It’s a group that neither cared about style points nor goal differential at the Olympics. It’s a group that was believable when they stated the previous losses to the United States weren’t haunting them.
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 blood bath.”
From 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 but 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.
Knight tied the game. Keller won the game.
But neither of those things happen without 30 saves from goalie Aerin Frankel. She was outstanding in the scoreless first period and kept them 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 in the game — perhaps her best was on Canada star Sarah Fillier in the second period.
Frankel gave up two goals the entire tournament. Unlike many of her teammates, she saved the best for last — and that’s not all she saved.
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 them 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 hoped for. That’s an odd place to be for the U.S., as evidenced by their “not ready for prime time” performance for nearly three periods, but they didn’t fumble the chance.
This was a special mix of players. Veterans like Knight, Kendall Coyne-Schofield and Keller mixing perfectly with the next wave of players like defender Caroline Harvey, forward Abbey Murphy and Edwards. The youth movement is a credit to the foundation those previous generations of U.S. players laid down to grow women’s hockey, from the international success they had to the professional women’s 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 help develop them into champions. But for the U.S. and Canada, it’s a time of transition before the 2030 Olympics. Knight has already stated this is her last Olympics. Coyne-Schofield turns 34 in May. For Canada, Natalie Spooner is 35 and Poulin is 34.
Legendary Hilary Knight, second right, has already unveiled that the 2026 Games would be her last for Team USA. Gregory Shamus/Getty ImagesThe Americans have a stronger base of young talent than Canada does. There’s been some concern north of the border about their pipeline during the lopsided last 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, at least gives some credence to the latter theory.
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