Inside U.S. women’s hockey gold rally led by Hilary Knight and Megan Keller: ‘Who’s going to be the hero?’

MILAN — Hilary Knight felt the responsibility to speak up.

The previously unbeaten, unchallenged  U.S. women’s hockey team was facing real game pressure for the first time at these Olympics, down a goal and running low on time with just one period left in Thursday’s gold-medal match.

Advertisement

“Who’s going to be the hero?” the 36-year-old American captain said. “We need a hero. There’s a hero in this room.”

Turns out Knight was wrong about one thing . There wasn’t one hero in the U.S. locker room. There was two.

The U.S. doesn’t take gold and glory without Knight giving her team new life with a tying goal with just over two minutes left in regulation, nor without Megan Keller juking a Canadian defender out of her skates to set up the winning goal four minutes into overtime. Those are the plays that made possible a 2-1 gold-medal-clinching, come-from-behind U.S. win. Those are the plays that will live on in U.S. women’s hockey lore long after the American victory celebration comes to an end.

America’s star-spangled comeback started with a third-period faceoff in the attacking zone after coach John Wroblewski pulled his goalie with just over two minutes to go. When the puck went to defender Laila Edwards at the point, Knight thought to herself, “I better get to the front of the net. She’s going to rip that puck.”

Advertisement

That quick thinking allowed Knight to redirect Edwards’ rocket past Canadian goaltender Ann-Renee Desbiens. Knight’s goal was the 15th of her career in the Olympics and broke the American record held by Natalie Darwitz and Katie King, not that she cared about that whatsoever when the puck hit the back of the net.

“I was thinking we’re going to win the game,” said Knight, who has said that this will be her final Olympics. “It was just that simple.

“You never want to run out of time, especially with a great team, so when that goal went in, I was like here we go, this is ours.”

Knight’s goal certainly galvanized the Americans, but it didn’t crush Canadian spirits. For the first 57-plus minutes of Thursday’s game, underdog Canada had taken the fight to an U.S. team that had won seven straight games in the rivalry. The Canadians had, in the words of captain Marie-Philip Poulin, played “in-your-face, relentless hockey.” So they saw no reason they couldn’t win in overtime, even if Knight had ripped away victory in regulation.

Advertisement

“You live for those moments,” Poulin said. “I was excited. It would have been a hell of a story.”

The story turned in favor of the Americans four minutes into a frantic 3-versus-3 overtime. It started with Taylor Heise sending a length-of-the-ice pass to a streaking Keller.

“Meg was flying up the ice calling for the puck and I kind of wanted a change, so I chucked it up to her,” Heise said.

Keller took care of the rest. First she put a move so filthy on Canada’s Claire Thompson that it didn’t seem like it should be possible on ice. Then she didn’t waste her chance 1-on-1 with Desbiens, lashing the puck through the legs of the Canadian goaltender to secure an imperfect but resilient American victory.

“Honestly, we talked about it going into overtime, playing to win rather than playing not to lose,” Keller said. “I think a lot of times you get a little nervous trying to make a move, but I thought, ‘Why not?’ Let’s take a chance here and try to get to the net.”

Advertisement

A come-from-behind victory over their bitter rivals bolsters this talented American roster’s case as the best women’s hockey team their country has ever produced. The U.S. had flattened everything in its path before the gold-medal match, outscoring its first six opponents 31-1 and not giving up a goal for 16 consecutive periods.

The only goal the U.S. surrendered before Thursday was a flukey one in its opening game of group play. Czechia’s Barbora Jurickova emerged from the penalty box at the exact same moment the U.S. coughed up possession of the puck, leading to a breakaway goal.

“I just think we cemented ourselves as one of the best U.S. teams in history,” Heise said.

She wasn’t alone in that sentiment

Advertisement

“This is the best U.S. team I’ve ever been part of,” Knight said.

For decades, the hierarchy at the top of women’s hockey has been Canada, the U.S. and then everyone else. One of the North American powers has captured gold at every Olympics to feature women’s hockey and every world championships. With few exceptions, the rest of the world has essentially battled it out for third place.

Canada entered Thursday having won five of seven Olympic golds, but the U.S. has enjoyed the upper hand in the rivalry recently. First, the Americans edged the Canadians in overtime in the gold-medal match at last year’s world championships. Then they convincingly swept four Rivalry Series matchups earlier this winter. Then, in the final game of group play in Milan, they inflicted the worst beatdown on the Canadians in their brilliant Olympic history.

Advertisement

The lingering question coming out of that 5-0 U.S. blowout was how much the score was a product of the absence of Poulin. Was the gap between the best two teams in the world really that wide? Or might the Canadians have been more competitive if they had the superstar who scored the game-winning goal in three previous Olympic gold-medal matches?

Maybe it was the return of Poulin. Maybe it was Canadian pride and urgency. Whatever the reason, Thursday’s gold-medal match looked nothing like the one-sided previous matchup.

Hungrier and more aggressive from the start, Canada scored first and put the favored Americans on their heels. The message to the U.S. was clear: This was not going to be another walkover.

Advertisement

“Honestly, we played exactly how we wanted to,” defender Erin Ambrose said. “We kept them to the outside, we put pucks deep, we took care of the puck. Our goalie made big saves when we needed her to. We played a pretty darn good hockey game.”

That’s what made the final result so hard to stomach for the teary-eyed Canadians after the game.

They were in position to win for all but two minutes of regulation, until Knight struck. And so did Keller. And the gold belonged to the Americans.