Canada downs USA to win women's hockey gold
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E-mail Xinhua, February 17, 2022
Canadian women's ice hockey team took down defending champion the United States 3-2 in the final to get their fifth Olympic title at the Beijing Winter Olympics on Thursday.
Canada was hungry for revenge after a 3-2 shootout defeat to the U.S. in the final of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018 and they beat the Americans 4-2 in the preliminary round in Beijing.
"To be honest, I think the loss in 2018 was a motivation for us to change things. When you are on the same page, and when everybody wants to succeed, it makes me different," said Marie-Philip Poulin, the captain of Canada.
Canadian forward Sarah Nurse scored at 7:50, which was her fifth goal in Beijing, and 30-year-old Poulin put the puck into the net at 15:02 to widen the lead to 2-0 in the first period.
Poulin became the only hockey player, female or male, to score in four Olympic gold medal games after she scored in the finals in Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018.
Poulin scored her sixth goal in Beijing at 29:08, before 32-year-old American forward Hilary Knight threw the puck into the net at 36:39 to cut the deficit to 3-1, which was the 2018 Olympic gold medalist's sixth goal in Beijing.
American forward Amanda Kessel scored their last goal at 59:47 in power play.
"There's no quit in this team, we showed this tonight, we scored with 13 seconds left and we just ran out of time," said Kendall Coyne Schofield, the forward of the U.S.
"Obviously we came up short, we did not get the puck to the net enough, and I don't think we played up to our potential. I really like our team and we love each other, and I am proud of our effort." Knight said.
The red Maple Leaf set a new scoring record of 57 goals in seven games in the Winter Olympics.
Canada and the U.S. have won all the seven gold medals since the women's ice hockey tournament entered the Winter Olympics program in 1998.
"We love it. It's a great rival in sport. We love the competition, and we made definitely a lot of growth," the defender of the U.S. Cayla Barnes said on rival Canada.
The Canadians won the four games in the preliminary round and rolled over Sweden and Switzerland in the quarterfinals and semifinals respectively.
The Americans had a 3-1 win-loss record in the preliminary round and took down the Czech Republic and Finland in the quarterfinals and semifinals to book a rematch against Canada in the final.
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