The USA defeated Canada 6-3 and won the women’s hockey World Cup gold

BRAMPTON, Ontario With all the focus on the United States’ young and revamped rosters, who else but Hilary Knight, the team’s most experienced and accomplished star, was instrumental in securing their country’s 10th Women’s Hockey World Cup gold and the first of four. years.

The 33-year-old Knight scored three times, including a go-ahead goal with 3:10 left in regulation, in Canada’s 6-3 win over its cross-border rival in the home city of suburban Toronto on Sunday.

Apologizing that his voice was hoarse from the party where Americans sang a rousing rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, Knight smiled and said, Yeah, it’s been a while.

The Americans overcame three one-goal losses and the pain of losing their last three gold-medal games leading up to the World Championships and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games against Canada to reclaim gold for the first time since a 2-1 win over Finland. 2019

Canada is hard to beat. It’s hard to beat Canada in Canada, right? So we definitely felt like underdogs,” Knight added. People are always rooting against us, but somehow we persevere and it feels sweeter that way.

Caroline Harvey had a goal and an assist, and Abbey Murphy and Cayla Barnes also had an empty netter. The Americans scored four unanswered goals in the third period. Aerin Frankel stopped 24 shots.

With five players on the U.S. roster making their tournament debuts, Knight scored twice in a 27-second span to capitalize on a two-man advantage with the game tied at 3.

With Brianne Jenner out for a trip and Claire Thompson later penalized 1:11 into delay of game, Knight took a shot from center to beat Ann-Renee Desbiens high on the glove side. Knight made it 5-3 with a deflection off Harveys left point. As for the first goal, Knight tied the score at 2 by converting a 2-1 break with Amanda Kessel 8:30 into the second period.

Jenner scored twice and added an assist, and Marie-Philip Poulin had a goal and an assist for Canada, which settled for its ninth silver medal to go with 12 golds and one bronze. Desbiens stopped 16 shots in losing his first tournament game in 17 career starts.

I guess I was a little incredulous now. “Not that we don’t know the opponent is a great hockey team, but we have so much faith in our group,” Jenner said.

I think there are a lot of moments in the game. You know, I think it’s easy to place the blame elsewhere. But I think we have to look at ourselves,” Jenner added. I mean we have to figure out a way to hold these wires.

The United States has not beaten Canada for the gold medal since the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. Otherwise, Canada and the United States have faced each other in 21 other gold medal games at world tournaments.

They definitely had our number for a few years, so this feels a little special, Kessel said. I’ve been on the other side of it, where you just win, win, win. And you kind of have their number and it’s a trust thing. So I think this was huge for us.

The USA ended up leading the tournament with 43 goals and recovered from a 4-3 loss to Canada in the opening round. And they beat a veteran Canadian team that featured most of the players that have been together since the win in Beijing.

The message was pretty clear. “There’s not much you can say in those situations where you can make them feel better,” Canada coach Troy Ryan said. I believe they will learn from this experience and only grow as a group.

Knight finished with a tournament-leading eight goals and finished third with 12 points. In all, he took his tournament record goals to 61, while taking his career high to 101 points. Knight also won her ninth gold medal of the tournament, tying the record set by Canada’s Danielle Goyette.

The win also came as Knight captain after Kendall Coyne Schofield announced her pregnancy last month.

Obviously with Kendall not being here, we felt it was like a hole in your heart, said Knight, who had trouble reaching Schofield because of poor cell service at the arena.

He definitely missed, Knight said. And we were happy to get this win. And we can’t wait for him to come back and join us.

The Americans responded each time Canada scored, with Harvey tying the game at 3 at the 5:40 mark of the third period. Holding the puck at the left point, the 20-year-old defenseman took a few steps in and made a shot that beat Desbiens glove side.

Harvey enjoyed a breakout tournament scoring four goals and leading the tournament with 14 points. It capped off a phenomenal year for the 20-year-old, who last month celebrated winning an NCAA title as a freshman at Wisconsin.

Denisa Krizova scored twice, including a goal, and added an assist as the Czech Republic won its second straight bronze medal with a 3-2 win over Switzerland in a rematch of last year’s third-place game.

Kiira Yrjanen scored the winning goal 6:48 into the second period, and Finland will return to Group A in next year’s World Cup on Sunday after a 3-1 win over Sweden. The Finns, who won 13 silver medals and a silver in 2019, recovered after finishing in the worst seventh place in the tournament last year in Denmark.