There is no silver lining for Team USA women's hockey, simply a silver medal
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The Olympic women’s ice hockey rivalry between the United States and Canada has become the sport’s finest rivalry due to the passion, antagonism, and unrivaled level of play in their games. What they haven’t experienced is a feeling of inevitability: that one side will win out. That is until Canada hit the ice in the gold-medal game of the Beijing Olympics on Thursday and beat the United States 3-2.

From the sportsbooks to public opinion, the gap between the clubs has never been bigger.
And it should be cause for concern for USA Hockey.
To summarise the rivalry: This was the sixth encounter between the United States and Canada for Olympic gold in women’s ice hockey since the event was established in 1998. The Americans won twice (1998, 2018), whereas Canada has won gold five times: four times against the United States and once against Sweden in 2006 when the United States had to settle for bronze.

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With their 3-2 shootout victory at the 2018 PyeongChang Games, the Americans halted Canada’s streak of four consecutive gold medals. It took a thrilling goal by Monique Lamoureux with 6:21 remaining in regulation, an even more dramatic goal by her twin sister, Jocelyn, in the shootout, and 29 stops from goaltender Maddie Rooney, plus four more in the shootout, to clinch the victory.

After the Olympics, the Lamoureux twins announced their retirement. Players that had several Olympic appearances, such as Kacey Bellamy, Gigi Marvin, and captain Meghan Duggan, also departed the squad. Brianna Decker suffered a leg injury in the Americans’ opening game in Beijing and was ruled out of the competition (she was pushed out on a cart to the silver-medal ceremony). Rooney appeared in the 4-2 preliminary-round defeat to Canada; Alex Cavallini started the gold-medal game and allowed an easy second goal to Marie-Philip Poulin to tip the scales to Canada in the opening stanza.
All of this is to say that, while Team USA returned 13 players from its gold-medal-winning squad in 2018, the roster had been depleted of several critical elements to that successful formula, those depth players who allowed them to compete with the great Canadians in prior rounds of this rivalry.

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