U.S. Women Face Rival Canada For Hockey World Championship Gold

Amanda Kessel competes during the women's ice hockey gold-medal match against Team Canada at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on Feb. 17, 2022 in Beijing.

Taylor Heise, a 22-year-old from Lake City, Minnesota, has been a breakout star of the tournament. She is the leading scorer with 13 points (5 goals, 8 assists) and is within reach of the tournament assist and scoring records. This will be her first medal-round game against the Canadians at the senior level, though she was a three-time gold medalist at the U-18 level.

A calm demeanor and trust in her teammates have led Heise to her success.

“When you're so comfortable with your talent, with your hard work, I think tomorrow we're going to come out and we're going to have such a game face on and be ready to go,” Heise said. “This is why we get up. Why we train. This is why we do what we do every single day.”

U.S. forward Amanda Kessel, a three-time Olympic medalist, is playing in her sixth world championship, but her longevity in the sport is what makes her appreciate the excitement of a gold-medal game.

“(Beijing) was a really disappointing loss for us,” Kessel said. “These kinds of opportunities don't come by that often. You never know when you're going to get the opportunity to go into another world championship gold medal game. You never can take them for granted.”

Success in this tournament has gone in spurts for both sides. Prior to Canada’s victory in 2021, the Americans had won five consecutive world titles and eight of the last nine contests. But Canada won the tournament’s first eight gold medals, beginning in 1990.

The U.S. won its first Olympic gold medal in 1998, but didn’t win a world championship until 2005.

Winning gold and beating their rival is what drives both teams. On the hardest practice days, knowing that the Canadians were working as just as hard is what pushed Crowley to keep going.

“They had won all those world championships,” Crowley said. “They were at the top of the world at that point. We hadn’t had any of that. We hadn't touched any of that gold and had that feeling. I think they had the momentum because they had that confidence from winning. We didn’t know that confidence yet. It's a different mentality.”

The rivalry was just as heated, and maybe more so, in those past days. Relationships between the players were chilled. Far fewer Canadians were playing in the NCAA than do now and the players weren’t intermingling in pro leagues. The idea of working or playing alongside Canadian players would have appalled Crowley.

“You were going to do everything you could to beat this team and I know they felt the same way,” Crowley said. “It didn't matter what game you were playing in. It could be a regular exhibition game and you’d be just as fired up as if it was a gold medal game. It was us or them. That battle is like nothing else.”