Rival women’s hockey team players marry
Love can be in the air anywhere, even in the middle of a fierce, high-stakes hockey rivalry.
Just ask former Canadian women’s hockey team forward Gillian Apps and American women’s team forward Meghan Duggan, who married this past weekend in Pownal, Maine.
“True love overcomes even the largest of rivalries,” the U.S. Olympic Committee tweeted with a picture of the happy couple.
“From competitors on the ice to partners for life,” tweeted the Canadian Olympic Committee.
Apps and Duggan have been part of easily the top rivalry in their sport.
Canada and the U.S., have squared off in five of six Olympic finals since the sport joined the Winter Games program in 1998.
Apps, a 34-year-old from Toronto, was part of Canadian teams that beat Duggan’s Americans for Olympic gold in 2010 and ’14. Apps also won gold with Canada in ’06.
Duggan, 31, was captain of the U.S. team that beat Canada in a shootout to claim the title this year in Pyeongchang, South Korea, but Apps had already retired.
“The most incredible day of my entire life,” Duggan wrote on Instagram.
“Nothing but smiles after this amazing weekend,” Apps wrote.
Apps is the granddaughter of Hockey Hall of Fame member Syl Apps, of Paris, Ont., who played for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
They’re not the only highprofile, cross-border couple in women’s hockey.
Caroline Ouellette, Canada’s captain at the 2014 Winter Games, and former U.S. team captain Julie Chu had a baby daughter Nov. 5, 2017.
Ouellette, who officially announced her retirement earlier this week, won four Olympic gold medals while Chu was a member of American teams that lost to Canada in three finals.
Soccer also has seen North American female rivals unite.
Canadian goalkeeper Erin McLeod married former U.S. international Ella Masar.