The American women’s hockey team beat the Canadians by a 2-1 score in overtime on Thursday afternoon to win the 2026 Olympic gold medal.
Canada has now lost eight straight games against the U.S.
With the silver medal, Canada now has 15 medals at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.
Kristin O’Niell scored the game’s opening goal early in the second period on a short-handed breakaway for Canada, but American Hilary Knight scored the equalizer with less than three minutes in the third period. It was 29 year-old Megan Keller who scored the overtime winner for the U.S.
Canada won the gold medal against the U.S. at the 2022 Beijing Olympics by a 3-2 score.
Canada and the U.S. are the only countries to win Olympic gold medals since women’s hockey was first introduced in the Olympics in 1998. Each gold medal game has been separated by one goal since Torino 2006, where Canada beat Sweden by a 4-1 score. Canada and the U.S. have faced off for the Olympic gold medal seven times in the past eight gold medal matchups.
The game as a whole marked a new chapter in the development of women’s hockey, as this is the first Olympic gold medal game since the launch of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL).
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Cheri Bradish, a sport business professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, had told Global News ahead of the game that while “the PWHL has a global footprint, (it) really is a North American property.”
“What will be really interesting to track now is this global stage, where the Olympics will take the PWHL global in a different way.”
The PWHL started the season with its strongest attendance in league history, welcoming more than 154,000 attendees across the first 16 games of the season in January. The PWHL also announced in March 2025 that the league surpassed one million fans in attendance since its launch.
While 61 PWHL athletes flew to Milan to compete in these Olympic Games, there were 39 PWHL players competing in this year’s gold-medal game, and an additional six PWHL players in the bronze medal game between Switzerland and Sweden, showcasing the talent of PWHL players. Currently, the PWHL has 17 players playing from across 10 different countries not in North America.
Laurel Walzak, professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s RTA sport media program, called the building of women’s hockey “promising.”
“When you see the women’s game, there is so much hope. There is professionalism, there is talent, they are playing more regularly, there’s more money being put into it,” said Walzak.
“All of that put together makes this great recipe of success.”
Jayna Hefford, PWHL executive vice-president of hockey operations, said “the bar has been raised in Milano Cortina with elevated speed, skill and physicality driven by the PWHL and the global growth of the game.”
“We know a lot of new fans may be discovering women’s hockey and falling in love with the sport through the Olympics, and it’s exciting to feed that surging interest with the PWHL, where fans can continue following world-class athletes competing every single day, not just every four years,” said Hefford.
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