Team USA won the shootout 3-2, with forward Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson scoring the winning goal. The women in blue poured onto the ice after Canada’s Megan Agosta couldn’t reply, handing the Americans the gold.
The US Women’s Hockey team hadn’t won gold since the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, so tensions were even higher than usual against their regional rivals.
Ahead of the match, they had already played once in these Olympics. Canada won that preliminary round 2-1 despite being out shot by the Americans 45-23.
Pay battle
Most of the women on the team said they had to work one or two other jobs in addition to training and competing because they were making so little from being on the national team.
It was a hard won victory, with the athletes boycotting the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship and USA Hockey threatening to bring in scabs.
They drew support from players’ associations for the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB and the NHL, and finally, in March 2017, reached an agreement for parity with the men’s team, though the exact details have not been released.