Happy Hockey Friday! I’m Elisha Côté from The Ice Garden, and this week we’re stepping back from Milano Cortina 2026, not to dwell on the result, but to look at what it revealed about the current state of Canada’s women’s program.
Canada didn’t leave Italy empty-handed. But it did leave with questions. And most of them begin with how this roster was built, and how some of the younger players were used.
For this Olympic cycle, Canada leaned into familiarity. Sixteen players returned from Beijing, their roles reinforced through Women’s World Championship runs and Rivalry Series games. Experience was foundational until it stopped working after Canada’s loss at last year’s Women’s World Championships.
In the months leading up to the Olympics, Canada struggled badly in the Rivalry Series, having several lopsided losses that exposed gaps in pace, transition defense, and five-on-five offensive generation against the United States. Rather than experimenting with new options, Canada doubled down on what it already knew. The roster stayed largely intact. Roles stayed familiar. Experience was trusted, even as the gap those games revealed continued to widen.
That pattern followed them to Milan. When Canada suffered a 5–0 loss to the United States in round-robin play, it didn’t feel like an outlier. It felt like confirmation.
By the gold-medal game, that reality was impossible to ignore.
Canada’s fourth line, Julia Gosling, Kristin O’Neill, and Natalie Spooner, barely saw the ice. O’Neill scored Canada’s only goal in the final, yet the trio logged roughly five minutes. Jenn Gardiner played less than a minute, and seventh defender Kati Tabin didn’t play at all.
Meanwhile, the Americans kept rolling.
This wasn’t a failure of effort. It was a failure of adaptability. Canada built a roster that included youth, speed, and upside, then hesitated to lean into those players when they needed them most.
And the conversation doesn’t end there.
It also includes those who weren’t in Milan at all. Chloe Primerano, one of Canada’s most dynamic young college defenders, stayed home. Rebecca Leslie, playing some of the best hockey of her career and in the PWHL, stayed home.
Those decisions weren’t completely unjustified. But they do signal a program that continues to prioritize old over new, even as the global game accelerates.
Canada didn’t lose because it lacks talent. It lost because it trusted experience more than it trusted momentum.
Silver isn’t a crisis by any means. But it definitely is a message.
And as the next cycle begins, Canada’s challenge won’t be finding players who can help. It will be trusting them early enough that, when the gold-medal game arrives, they’re trusted to deliver.
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