MILAN — The Star-Spangled Banner’s final note has long cleared the arena air, and Natalie Spooner is still brushing tears and fighting a quivering lip and doing her best to get through interviews with a brave face.
Three questions from strangers are more than enough for Laura Stacey’s voice to start shaking, to turn and walk away and join her team and sit in the pain of a silver medal win.
“Heartbreaking,” Stacey says. “You see the tears. You feel the emotions. We were minutes away from having gold medals around our necks.
“The reason it hurts so bad is because of how much pride we have, how proud I am of that locker room. It hasn’t been easy. It’s been quite the journey. But every single person in that locker room played for one another today, and I think that’s something we got to take away from this.”
These Canadians, they vowed to scratch and claw, to turn this thing into a bloodbath, to avenge a year’s worth of losses and buck the odds and silence the critics and rep the flag.
Belief and effort can only bring a team so far, however. And the mighty Team USA, an Olympic wagon that rolled unbothered through the preliminaries and knockout bracket, came into Thursday’s inevitable showdown with its northern neighbours as weighty favourites to dethrone the 2022 champs.
Heck, the speedy and skillsy Americans had defeated Canada’s best no less than seven straight times, most recently last week, when they laid a 5-0 beatdown on the Red and White.
But sport is sport.
God invented it to surprise us. To thrill us. To crush us.
And on any given Thursday, one united group determined and stubborn and focused enough can upset. Then rejoice and cry happy and fling its mitts high into the Milano Santaguilia Arena air.
Canada nearly conjured such a stunning upset.
“We were right there all game. I thought we had a great start. We had a good forecheck. We were getting chances. Probably one of the best games we’ve been able to put together,” Spooner says.
“We knew we had that fight in us. So, yeah, it's tough. I think when you come into these tournaments, you want to bring gold back to your country. So, to lose it that way, it’s tough.”
Yes, even though Team USA leaves Milan as the most dominant hockey team of the fortnight — and wholly deserving of its gold medal — Team Canada should leave with its head held high.
Boy, did they give the U.S. a test, coming hard out of the gates and snatching a lead before eventually breaking 37 long minutes later, then losing a heartbreaker 2-1 in overtime.
A soccer score in a calico nation.
“We’ve been there before. We know how to do it,” Canada’s Brianne Jenner had said. “It’s just a matter of us showing up.”
They showed up, all right.
In an airtight contest played loud and fast and blessed with stingy defence and superb goaltending at both ends (Ann-Renee Desbiens for Canada, Aerin Frankel for the U.S.), for a while it appeared one clean look would do.
Kristin O’Neill got that chance shorthanded early in the second, converting a backhand deke after a feathery two-on-one feed from Stacey.
The potential golden goal, followed by 37 minutes of holding the fort and a nation’s breath… until a pulled goalie and twist of the plot.
U.S. captain Hilary Knight drove to the slot with six skaters and infinite desperation. Knight got her blade on Laila Edwards point shot and tied the final with only 2:04 to gold. (She also became the all-time scoring leader in USA women’s Olympic history.)
Cue the three-on-three overtime and clean ice for Megan Keller to script history, complete the dramatic comeback, and throw the Santagiulia into thunderous chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”
Keller accepted a stretch pass from Taylor Heise, turned defender Claire Thompson inside-out, then flipped Team USA’s third golden goal through Desbiens’ pads.
Sprawled and still sliding toward the corner, Thompson looked up only to bury her face in her gloves when she spotted the black thing tucked behind the line.
“I’m lost for words,” Keller said. “This is an incredible feeling. I love these girls so much. This group deserves it. Just the effort and the faith that we kept through this four-year journey is something very special.”
“Unbelievable. I thought it was Connor McDavid out there,” teammate Laila Edwards said, before deciding to pick an American comparable. “Let me go back to that. She was like Auston Matthews out there.”
Canada’s Julia Gosling figured they were just fine with their underdog status, heading in.
Outside doubt can embolden or crush an athlete.
“It makes us more hungry,” Gosling had said. “We haven’t won against them for a year. We're ready to take that and heartbreak them.”
They nearly did.
“What I’m most proud of is this group and the heart and the pride and the passion we’ve played with after a lot of adversity throughout the year and a lot of noise in the background,” said Renata Fast, after logging a game-high 31:22.
“This group showed up tonight and made our country proud.”
Sport is equally cruel as it is rewarding, and it was Canada’s bench that sat silent and sunken as Keller’s puck slithered through and the clock froze.
USA finishes the tournament with a ridiculous 33-2 goal advantage. They came in hotter and younger and, seemingly, more confident than Team Canada.
But the Canadians, on this night, hardly resembled the hockey team we saw last week. Or in any of this season’s Rivalry Series, for that matter.
But one that should, tough as it is, fly home from Italy proud of their medal, despite its hue.
Amid the misery, Marie-Philip Poulin approached each of her teammates with a hug. One by one, the hobbled captain told the women how proud she was of them.
“She’s the best captain possible. Everyone just loves the person that she is because she makes an effort to have a relationship with every player,” Fast said.
“Yeah, nice to be able to have that moment with her.”
The moment stings, no doubt. Because of the rivalry. Because of a program that looks to be fading an inch. Because Canada’s stars will be on the wrong side of prime in 2030. And because, on this night, they were mere minutes away.
“There’s gonna be a lot of girls that are going to use this as motivation,” said the veteran Spooner, 35. “I know (silver) in 2018 was a huge motivation for me. And same now. It’s a tough spot to be in, and you don't want to be there hearing not your anthem on that line.
“So, you go back to work. And you make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Fox’s Fast Five
• Marie-Philip Poulin at the Olympics: three gold medals, two silver.
Hayley Wickenheiser at the Olympics: four gold medals, one silver.
Battling a knee injury, Poulin’s ice time (18:21) only ranked fifth among Canadian forwards.
“Yeah, it hurts,” Stacey, Poulin’s wife, says. Her voice is cracking. One skate stomps the padded ground of the mix zone. “She’s a warrior. Sucks to see her in pain. But, man, you would never know. She battled hard.
“She’s our rock. She’s our leader. She showed it. She did everything possible she could, and I think our team followed her every single step of the way. And I think every single one of us can be really proud of her and this entire team.”
• Team USA women’s shutout streak reached 351:23, becoming the longest in Olympic history.
• Stand-on-her-head Swiss goalie Andrea Brändli stopped an incredible 116 of the 119 shots she faced in elimination games (.975 save percentage) and backstopped her nation to its second Olympic medal in women’s ice hockey (both bronze).
“It’s huge. It shows, really, what Switzerland is doing,” the upbeat Brändli said. “We have so many people now that play in the Swiss League, and being 2-1 against Canada (in the semis) shows that we’re doing the right jobs. You know, we’re just not there yet.
“Our shot count is very low. So, there needs to be more work done back home in Switzerland. But overall, we’re going in the right direction.”
• Auston Matthews on rooting for the American women: “Watching them, being around them, they’re a very determined group. There’s a lot of high-end players there. Some girls that have been around for a little bit and some that are coming up that are extremely impressive. We’re rooting for them big.”
• U.S. defenceman Caroline Harvey averages more than two points per game for the University of Wisconsin (54 points in 26 games) this season and was noticeably the best player on the ice. She’s everywhere. And now she’s the 2026 Olympic MVP.
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