MILAN — A disjointed Canadian women’s hockey team suffered its most lopsided loss to the United States in Olympic women’s hockey Tuesday when the U.S. prevailed 5-0.
Canada was minus captain Marie-Philip Poulin, who sustained a lower-body injury in the previous night’s 5-1 win over the Czechs. Brianne Jenner wore the captain’s ‘C’ in Poulin’s absence.
“We’re as hungry as it gets and we’re going to do everything we can to learn from this,” Jenner said.
The U.S. dominated puck possession. When a Canadian had the puck, one or even two Americans closed quickly on her.
When a Canadian gained the offensive zone with the puck, an American defender steered her to the boards.
The U.S. blocked shots from the perimeter and gave up little territory to Canada from close range.
Canada mustered two shots on two power-play chances, and messed up a four-on-two rush during a second-period power play with an offside.
“We just didn’t play very well at all. Irresponsible with the puck,” Canada’s head coach Troy Ryan said.
“We rushed a lot of decisions. You can see it even surface in the amount of times we go offside, the amount of icings that we had.
“There’s so many areas you need to improve. So we’ll just pick a few and try to pick away at those.”
The U.S. led 2-0 and 4-0, and outshot Canada 11-4 and 22-10, at period breaks.
“We know we have the speed on every team, so being able to jump first and get to pucks first and be the first one on the scoreboard I think is important to us and part of our identity,” said U.S. forward Hannah Bilka after scoring twice in the game.
“Building off that every game and just every period I think we’ve gone up, so just keep that going and I don’t think any team can keep up with us.”
Caroline Harvey had a goal and two assists, and Kirsten Simms and Laila Edwards also scored for the U.S., which topped Group A with a 4-0-0-0 record.
Goalie Aerin Frankel made 20 saves for her country’s first shutout against Canada in the Olympic women’s tournament.
Canada’s starter Ann-Renée Desbiens was replaced by Emerance Maschmeyer in the third period when the U.S. scored a fifth goal on 27 shots. Maschmeyer made six saves in relief.
All five teams in Group A and the top three in Group B advance to the quarterfinals Friday and Saturday. Canada, the defending champions, will play its quarterfinal Saturday.
Canada (2-0-0-1) caps the preliminary round Thursday against Finland (1-0-0-2) in a game that will decide second in Group A.
That game scheduled for Feb. 5 was postponed because of multiple cases of norovirus among the Finns.
Tuesday’s game was the first meeting of the archrivals since the U.S. completed a four-game Rivalry Series sweep Dec. 13 in Edmonton.
The Americans outscored Canada 24-7 in those games. Canada’s lack of offence continued into Tuesday.
When asked if Canada played better Tuesday than it did in the Rivalry Series, Ryan replied “I don’t believe so, no.”
“We don’t expect any of this to be easy, but we’ve just got to make sure we’re much better than we were tonight,” he said.
“The big message for me was that there just seemed to be a bit of a shoulder drop, a little bit of like the group got down a little. I have no time for it. You’re at the Olympic Games. You’ve got to either have success in those games or you’ve got to learn and when you learn a little bit about yourself, you learn a bit about the opposition.
“But there’s just no time for dropping the shoulders and hanging your head.”
Poulin was checked hard into the boards by Kristyna Kaltounkova in the first period Monday.
Poulin headed for the bench, and after skating a few circles on the ice after the first period, she didn’t return to the game.
“Definitely optimistic that she will be back at some point,” Ryan said. “Not sure if she’ll be back for the Finland game, but that hasn’t been ruled out or in.”
Czechia went 1-0-1-2 and Switzerland 0-1-0-3 in Group A. The Finns were a 3-1 winner over the Swiss on Tuesday.
Sweden (4-0-0-0), Germany (2-1-0-1) and host Italy (2-0-0-2) advanced out of Group B.
Canada played its first game of the tournament in the 14,000-seat Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena after two games at Milano Rho.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 10, 2026.
Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press
