There were signs this was coming. More than signs, really. Alarm bells. Air raid sirens.
But there was still something almost otherworldly about watching it unfold.
On Tuesday, the United States defeated Canada, 5-0, in women’s hockey’s most heated rivalry. And the game in the 2026 Winter Olympics women’s ice hockey preliminary round wasn’t as close as the score indicated. The U.S. women dominated in every conceivable way. Speed through the neutral zone. Board battles. Zone exits. Goaltending. Puck movement. You name it, the Americans were decisively better.
Why We Wrote This
For the first time in Olympic history, Canada failed to score a goal in a women’s ice hockey match. The United States’ 5-0 shutout hints at the ramped-up future for the women’s game in a longstanding rivalry between the two nations.
This is what the U.S. and Canada usually do to all the other teams in women’s hockey. Almost never to each other, and certainly not in the Olympics. Before Tuesday, the most lopsided victory in the Olympic rivalry was a 7-4 U.S. win in the preliminary rounds of the 1998 Nagano Games.
But late last year in the traditional pre-Olympic Rivalry Series, the U.S. made a statement. It won all four games by a combined score of 24-7. Yet surely – surely – it couldn’t happen again here.
It did, and for the first time in Olympic history, Canada failed to score a goal.
Now Canada is left to wonder what on earth it can do to prevent the U.S. from winning the inevitable gold-medal rematch on Feb. 19. A U.S. win against Canada there would equal the longest winning streak for either team in the history of the rivalry – eight games.
It is possible that Canada could see the return of its best player, Marie-Philip Poulin, the consensus greatest player of all time, who was out of the game Tuesday after an injury during the team’s 5-1 win over Czechia on Monday.
But for all Ms. Poulin’s unquestioned greatness, she also, in some ways, exemplifies how the rivalry has changed so dramatically.
Like many of her teammates this year, Ms. Poulin is a veteran who has been through the hockey wars – with more good times than bad against the U.S., frankly. Canada’s five Olympic golds to America’s two indicates the historic balance of power – close, yet with a clear tilt. Ms. Poulin has won three of those golds, the most recent at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, when Canada defeated the U.S. 3-2.
But on the ice Tuesday, the Canadians could not keep up with a hungrier American side. The U.S. has leaned into youth and speed, and the Canadians must have felt like a beehive had fallen on their heads.
“We were buzzing, it was fun,” grinned American forward Abbey Murphy after the game.
Mike Sega/Reuters
The shift in power is most obvious in two American defensemen, who each had a goal Tuesday and were the best players on the ice by some margin. Caroline Harvey and Laila Edwards are best friends, teammates, and college roommates at the University of Wisconsin. They also looked like they were playing the game at another level.
This is the evolution of sport. Sometimes it happens slowly. Sometimes, two young women take the game by the scruff of the neck and show the world what’s next on a Tuesday night in Milan.
If the rivalry has told fans anything, it’s that neither side stays down long. The longest period of dominance came from 2004 to 2007, when Canada won 16 of the 20 meetings. That was also the only time the U.S. failed to advance to an Olympic gold medal game – losing to Sweden in the semifinals of the 2006 Turin Olympics.
This year’s Canadian team is likely not facing that indignity. They’ve been dominant in their other games so far. Tuesday pointed to something else. It suggested that the U.S. might be a freight train heading express to hockey’s future. In next week’s final, the U.S will almost surely have a golden chance to leave no doubt.