For USA, best prep for winning Olympic gold is facing Canada
For U.S. women’s hockey players, there’s no such thing as too many games against their biggest rivals.
The USA and Canada will play each other seven times — and more than likely it will be eight — before they meet in the Olympics in Pyeongchang on Feb. 15. The first of those games in the USA is Wednesday at Agganis Arena in Boston to kick off The Time is Now Tour (7:30 p.m. ET, NHL Network). The Americans beat Canada 5-2 Sunday in Quebec City.
The tour includes the Four Nations Cup, an annual tournament that features the USA, Canada, Finland and Sweden, which will be held in Florida. The Americans play the Canadians on Nov. 8 and will likely face them again in the championship.
“In order to be the best, you have to beat the best. We want to go through all the best competition in order to get there,” U.S. defenseman Monique Lamoureux-Morando said last month at the U.S. Olympic Committee’s media summit.
Added forward Meghan Duggan, “We want to play the fastest, the toughest games, in our case notoriously in the last little bit, those games are against Canada. I’d play a hundred of them before the Olympics.”
Clearly the stranglehold the USA and Canada have on the women’s game has only increased since the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Consider that the USA has won three consecutive world championships since the Olympics, beating Canada for gold each time. In those championships, the Americans outscored opponents 88-18.
But some consider Canada the favorite to take Olympic gold, simply because they’ve done so four consecutive times since the USA won the first Olympic women’s hockey tournament in 1998.
That it’s been nearly 20 years since Cammi Granato and her teammates beat Canada twice in Nagano is a motivating factor for players. Alex Rigsby was 6 and playing hockey with the boys when the Americans won gold.
“To have it be a 20-year anniversary, we’re ready for it. We’re ready to bring the gold medal back home to our soil,” Rigsby said.
Twenty-three players have been in residency in Winter Chapel, Fla., since September. It’s the same residency approach USA Hockey took with teams that competed in Sochi and Vancouver in 2010.
But there are obvious differences.
Robb Stauber is the head coach after serving as an assistant to Katey Stone in the 2014 Olympics. Stauber, a former goalie who played in the NHL, gives the offense more freedom.
“Four years ago it was a lot more structured,” forward Kendall Coyne said. “I would compare it to something like football, where we were pretty strict with our playbook. Now with Coach Robb’s style of play, we are more free; we are able to be a little more creative and let plays develop how they develop within the game.”
Players say they have an even tighter bond after a battle with USA Hockey for pay and benefits equal to what men’s national team players receive. The sides reached a four-year agreement as players threatened to boycott the world championships in March.
Lamoureux-Morando says there’s work to be done to achieve what was laid out in the agreement. Players realize their sport is in the Olympic spotlight once every four years.
Six women on the current team were forced to watch as their Canadian rivals celebrated with their gold medals in the last two Games.
“We focus on ourselves,” Duggan said of the team’s approach for the next four months. “We want to beat them every time we play them; it’s absolutely no secret. We don’t let up; we don’t take it lightly.”