Scott Stinson: It is officially time to worry about the Canadian women's hockey team

The defending Olympic champions didn't just get beaten at Milan-Cortina 2026 by the Americans. They were embarrassed

Canada’s loss to the United States in the preliminary round of the women’s hockey competition in Milan was not the biggest Olympic surprise of Tuesday.

That would be Norwegian biathlon skier Sturla Holm Laegreid, who won a bronze medal and immediately confessed to cheating on his girlfriend. “Sport has come second these last few days,” he said. “I wish I could share this with her.”

Dude, you get the gold medal for self-flagellation.

But even if the Team USA win wasn’t a shock of that variety, given that the Americans came into the tournament as clear gold-medal favourites, the manner of their victory was bracing. Alarming, even.

The United States rolled. They dominated. It was 4-0 after two periods, and that score flattered the Canadians. It ended 5-0.

This, in the long history of the Canada-USA women’s hockey rivalry, one of the absolute best in sport, simply does not happen. These teams play tight, back-and-forth games that are decided by the slimmest of margins.

Canada won gold in Sochi in 2014 with an overtime winner. The Americans eked out a shootout win to take gold in Pyeonchang. And at the last Olympics in Beijing, Canada shot out to a 3-0 lead in the gold-medal game, only to have the United States get two goals back. That one ended with the Canadians throwing themselves in front of pucks with frenetic abandon as they hung on to reclaim gold.

It ended with a scene that is more predictable than almost anything else in the entire Olympic program: one of the North American neighbours on the top of the medal podium in women’s hockey, the other one step down.

That tournament-ending tableau no longer seems all that certain.

Canada is in trouble. Seriously.

On Tuesday, the Canadian captain, Marie-Philip Poulin, hurt her leg after taking an awkward hit against Czechia. Poulin, 34, is one of the very best players in the history of the sport, and no one matches her big-game résumé. She has scored the winner in three Olympic finals, and has seven goals in four gold-medal games.

She tried to come back on the ice in the Czechia game, but gave up after testing the bum leg. Canada had little at risk in Tuesday’s game — they are already through to the medal round — so Poulin was kept out of the lineup. She probably won’t return until the quarter-final, if she makes it back at all. (Hockey Canada gave no detail on her injury prognosis, and it won’t. Poulin will either show up in the lineup on game day, or she will not.)

In her absence, it was easy to point to all the other stars on the Canadian team who could fill the scoring void. There were 15 other returning Olympians on the Team Canada, several of them among the best players in the nascent Professional Women’s Hockey League: Sarah Fillier, Sarah Nurse, Laura Stacey.

But against the Americans, Canada looked mostly lost. All those clichés about how Poulin was the heartbeat of the team, the fulcrum around which the whole thing operates, appeared disastrously true.

As much as Canadian fans might hope that a Poulin return could turn things around, in truth the fortunes of these teams have been trending this way for a while. USA Hockey has turned over its roster in recent years, bidding farewell to a number of long-time veterans and bringing in a pile of youngsters. There are nine members of their Olympic squad who are younger than 24 years old. There are seven who are still playing in the NCAA.

Canada, meanwhile, has no one in Milan under 24, and not a single collegiate player.

The results of the contrasting approaches were on display in a four-game exhibition series between the national teams late last year, and they were the hockey equivalent of the gritted-teeth emoji for Canada: Team USA swept the series by a combined score of 24-7. The Americans were younger, faster, and while it’s not totally fair to say hungrier, probably a little hungrier. With so many of their players getting their first taste of an Olympics, they are naturally keyed up.

To be fair to Hockey Canada, they have generally been quite good at this: Canadian women have won five of the last six Olympics, and they evidently stuck with their usual plan.

But to also be fair to Hockey Canada, the sport has undergone a sea change in the few years since Beijing, and the old way of doing things might just be outdated. Where national teams used to train together for six months before an Olympics, the arrival of the PWHL three years ago means that the players only had a brief camp to prepare, after their pro teams paused for the duration of the Games. The punishing schedule is also more likely to have an impact on the older Canadian team.

It’s possible, of course, that this whole thing will have been a wake-up call for the players with the maple leaf on their jerseys. There is time between now and the gold-medal game, scheduled for Feb. 19, for the Canadians to get their shit together on the way to an anticipated rematch against the United States. (Especially if Poulin recovers.)

But, if not? If the wafer-thin gap between Canada and their bitter rivals has suddenly grown into a yawning chasm?

There will be calls for an inquisition, and demands for wholesale reform. Hockey Canada, at least, has some experience with that.

Scott Stinson writes from suburban Toronto and is a regular contributor to The Line. He has covered four Olympics.

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