Throughout the women’s hockey tournament at the 2026 Olympics, it’s been clear that the United States and Canada have been the top teams. Now they meet in the gold medal game that has been anticipated since months before the teams even made it to Milan.
When Team USA and Canada take the ice Thursday, the Americans will enter as clear favorites. The U.S. was already the pre-tournament favorite and then became an even more lopsided favorite to win it all after winning a group-stage game between the two powers 5-0.
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With the gold medal game officially set, the American women are currently -425 to win gold on DraftKings, with -480 odds on FanDuel and -500 on BetMGM.
The U.S. has won 11 of the last 16 world championships and has a pair of Olympic golds, but it’s still jarring to see the Americans so heavily favored against Canada in hockey, women’s or men’s. Canada has won five of the seven Olympic golds and is 4-2 against the Americans in gold medal games.
The format has changed over the various Olympics, so these two teams haven’t always been paired in the same group. Of the four Olympics where they were, the team that won the group game ended up also winning the rematch in the gold medal game three times. The only exception was in 2018 when Canada won the group game 2-1, and the Americans won the final in a shootout.
That means there is precedent of a flipped result in the same Olympics, but there isn’t when the first result was a 5-0 blowout. That’s because there has never been a score that one-sided in Olympic history between these two rivals.
Before the Feb. 10 meeting, the biggest margin of victory in Olympic play was three, a 7-4 American win in Nagano in 1998 in the group stage. Bizarrely, Canada led that game 4-1, and it was still a one-goal game in the final few minutes. That’s nothing like what the U.S. did to Canada in Milan.
The Americans scored in the first four minutes and were up 4-0 after two periods. In the first two periods, the U.S. had more than doubled Canada’s shot count (22-10). The result wasn’t in doubt before the start of the third period.
The U.S. has given up one goal in its six games and is outscoring opponents 31-1. Canada has also been dominant against the rest of the field. The Canadians won their other three group games and the quarterfinal against Germany all by at least four goals. The semifinal against Switzerland was a closer 2-1 affair, although Canada outshot the Swiss 46-8.
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The key part of that semifinal for Canada was that captain Marie-Philip Poulin scored both goals. Poulin was out with an injury when these teams met nine days ago. Can she make a big difference to guide Canada to an upset win?
The Americans were favored before the Olympics, and the gap between the two teams has only widened. The U.S. had odds in the -150 to -190 range before the tournament, which gave the Americans a roughly 60 percent chance of winning gold. After the 5-0 win, those odds ranged from -325 to -350, putting the Americans at better than 75 percent. Nothing since that first meeting has turned the tide, including Poulin’s productive return from injury. The current odds imply the U.S. has a greater than 80 percent chance of knocking off its rivals again.