Canada got its revenge on Sunday, winning the 2024 IIHF Women’s World Championship and taking down the U.S. in a 6-5 overtime classic.

Marie-Philip Poulin, a longtime star for Canada, got her first two goals of the tournament, while Danielle Serdachny had the game-winner. 

"I hate to say you're not trying to rely on it, expect it, but I know I've grown to expect it," Canada coach Troy Ryan said of Philip-Poulin. "Tonight was just a whole other level. I could see in her eyes every time we called her name that she was ready to go. It's just special."

The win came after Canada lost 1-0 to the U.S. in the group stage of the tournament. On Sunday, the two teams met for the 22nd time in 23 tournaments in the gold medal game – and the action between the two teams delivered. 

Among those scoring for the U.S. were Megan Keller, Alex Carpenter, Hilary Knight, Laila Edwards and Caroline Harvey. Julia Gosling, Emily Clark and Erin Ambrose had the other three goals for Canada, giving them their 13th World title after falling to the U.S. in last year’s title game in Toronto. 

This year’s game was held in New York, and it was the second-highest scoring final between the two teams. The U.S. won a world championship 7-5 in 2015. 

"Oh man, that feels good to win it on U.S. soil," Canada goalie Ann-Renee Desbiens said after the game. "We owed it to them and owed it to ourselves to win that one."

Canada also denied Knight a record 10th World Championship win, although she did become the most decorated player in women’s world championship history with 14 medals. After the game, Poulin gave Knight a hug on the ice. 

"We just said 'that was unbelievable,'" Poulin said.

U.S. coach John Wroblewski echoed the sentiment that it was an outstanding game after being asked about ending the game on a power-play after leaving too many players on the ice. 

"Instead of talking about the isolated events of tonight's game, I think that normally that's an interesting storyline,” he said. “But I think the entity of an amazing 6-5 game is an amazing hockey game that took place."

Ohio State women’s hockey won its second national title in three years on Sunday.

They beat Wisconsin 1-0 on a goal from freshman Joy Dunne, avenging a loss to the Badgers in the Frozen Four final last season and a 6-3 loss to them earlier this season. 

“Yes, I scored the goal, but there was so much in that game," Dunne said. "Blocks, great saves – it took a team. It took behind-the-scenes work. It took everything. This is what we worked for. I’m so thankful because this is an amazing team to win a national championship with.

“As freshmen, we didn't play in that game last year but we felt that chip on the shoulder. We felt that hunger for it.”

Goalie Raygan Kirk called it a revenge tour but also said she made sure to have fun.

“I just tried to treat it like any other game and give it my all and just stay focused," Kirk said. "I was having the time of my life out there. I think you have to remember it is just a hockey game. You have to have fun.”

Coach Nadine Muzerall was proud of her team’s win, and said that while winning a second title in three seasons is a great goal, she wants to win another to prove the Buckeyes are building a legacy.

“Legacies obviously take time," Muzerall said. "Two is fantastic. I want to push to obviously three and more. It's going to take continued time and effort. ... Because you don't want to be part of history, you want to continue to push and be the future, as well.”

The PWHL is set to break the women’s hockey attendance record after selling out the Bell Centre in Montreal. 

The game has been billed as the Duel at the Top, taking place between Montreal and Toronto.

“Quebecers and Montrealers have shown an outpouring of support for our team this season, regardless of where we have played our games,”  said Danièle Sauvageau, GM of the Montreal team, when the game was announced.

“Our fans have been asking us for this and we are happy to be able to give them what they want. It’s exciting to know that we will be playing in the largest hockey venue in North America, and I am certain that our supporters will be louder than ever.”

Tickets sold out in less than 20 minutes for the largest hockey arena in North America at a capacity of 21,105. Re-sale tickets are up to almost $450. 

The previous attendance record had been set in Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, with 19,285 turning out earlier this season. Earlier this month, Detroit set a new American record for professional women’s hockey, with 13,736 fans in attendance to watch PWHL Boston face PWHL Ottawa.

“To have the opportunity to play at the Bell Centre would be historical, I think, is the best word to say,” Monreal’s Erin Ambrose said last month. “We’ve talked about how great our fans have been, the way they’ve showed up in Laval, the way they’ve showed up at Verdun, the way they showed up on the road, too, in Toronto. 

“We would love that opportunity and hopefully it can happen. I know that I’m crossing my fingers that we can be here. I mean, it would be pretty unbelievable to walk out there and kind of hear the crowd erupt. It would be something pretty monumental.”

The U.S. field hockey team is returning to the Olympic Games for the first time since 2016.

The team defeated Japan 2-1 in the semifinals of a last-chance qualification tournament in India on Thursday. The top three finishers in the event will all book tickets to compete in Paris at the Olympics this summer.

The team put up three back-to-back shutouts to advance to the semifinals. That winning streak was at stake against Japan, when the U.S. went down 1-0 in the third quarter. But they equalized seven minutes into the fourth quarter before winning the game.

Had the U.S. lost, they would have had one more chance to qualify in a third-place game against India or Germany. Instead, they finished with a silver medal after a 2-0 loss to Germany.

The U.S. has won just one Olympic medal in field hockey, a bronze medal back in 1984. They placed eighth in the 1988 Seoul Games and didn’t qualify for an Olympics again until 2008 (they automatically qualified as a host nation in 1996).

Three consecutive Olympic Games from 2008 through 2016 featured a best finish of fifth place.

This summer’s Olympic roster will be up to 16 players, with up to three alternates.

PWHL Minnesota made history on Saturday, as a record-breaking crowd of 13,361 fans turned out to watch their team beat Montreal 3-0 at Xcel Energy Center. The crowd shattered the attendance record of 8,318 that had previously been set by Ottawa in their debut a mere three days earlier.

Grace Zumwinkle led Minnesota with the league’s first hat trick.

“It was obviously super exciting. I think what was more exciting was just the atmosphere at the Xcel,” Zumwinkle told MPR News. “And I think breaking the attendance record of having roughly 14,000 fans was just as special as the hat trick in and of itself. It’s just huge that the league is getting to this point. And obviously super exciting for our team, especially with a lot of players from Minnesota.”

“Living in the State of Hockey, I knew our fans would show up for us, but today they have taken it to a whole new level,” said Natalie Darwitz, PWHL Minnesota General Manager. “I feel tremendously proud and inspired by our fan support.”

The only team in the league to play on NHL ice, they proved that they belonged on Saturday both with fan attendance and performance on the ice.

It helped that Team Minnesota houses a number of hometown players, from Lee Stecklein and Kelly Pannek, to No. 1 overall pick Taylor Heise. And then there’s Zumwinkle, an Excelsior native who scored the game’s only goals.

Zumwinkle told MPR News that playing at home in front of a Minnesota crowd was “surreal.”

“I think, especially playing for the Gophers, I got a taste of it, but nothing quite like having maybe 10,000 more fans than I was used to,” she said. “But I think it’s just the first word that comes to my mind is ‘pride.’ And I think that was evident in the fans that showed up.”

New York won the first-ever PWHL game on Monday, dominating Toronto in a 4-0 win.

It was a historic moment for women’s hockey, with Ella Shelton getting the first goal in PWHL history.

It was a monumental day for the new women’s hockey league, with lines for the sellout crowd out the doors and wrapped around the block to get in to watch New York win the first game in PWHL history.

New York followed up with three third-period goals from Alex Carpenter, Jill Saulnier and Kayla Vespa. New York goaltender Corinne Schroeder made 29 saves to get the league’s first shutout.

Billie Jean King, who helped to found the league, was present to witness history and give Toronto their starting lineup.

“Today was one for the history books, as the Professional Women’s Hockey League (@thepwhlofficial) played their 1st game in Toronto,” she wrote on social media. “@PWHL_Toronto took on @PWHL_NewYork, the game was action-packed, & the arena was full of terrific fans.”

Minnesota’s PWHL team will enter the inaugural season with a new head coach after Charlie Burggraf stepped down from the post. With less than a week before the puck drops on the new professional league, former NHL defensemen and U.S. women’s national team coach Ken Klee has taken over the role.

General manager Natalie Darwitz said that Burggraf told her on Tuesday that he would be stepping away from the job. He cited the decision as the right move for himself and his family.

“We thank Charlie Burggraf for all he did for our franchise, and we wish him only the best in the future,” Darwitz said. “Ken Klee brings a proven record of success to our coaching staff, and we are extremely pleased — for our players, our fans and our organization — that he has joined us.”

Klee was hired “within hours,” according to the Star Tribune. He previously coached PWHL Minnesota players Kendall Coyne, Lee Stecklein, Nicole Hensley and Kelly Pannek with the USWNT.

The former NHLer had been a finalist for the job in the initial search, but at the time Darwitz opted to hire her former Gophers assistant coach. But the familiarity with Klee helped to make the decision easy on Tuesday to offer him the job.

“I went through the interview process, but at the time it wasn’t meant to be,” Klee said. “Now it’s a little later and the time is right. I’m excited. I think super highly of these players.”

The PWHL begins its first season next week with six inaugural franchises. Minnesota will open its season on Jan. 3 in Boston.

The first puck drop for the PWHL is set for Jan. 1 — just five months after the league was announced. But a lot of moving parts need to be secured before play can begin.

On June 29, Los Angeles Dodgers and Chelsea FC owner Mark Walters bought out the previous pro women’s league, the Premier Hockey Federation. And since then, Walters, tennis legend Billie Jean King and multi-sport executive Stan Kasten — investors in the rival Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association — have transformed the previous leagues into a single six-team entity.

And just last week, the league hosted nine preseason contests so coaches could finalize their rosters and get a last look at the competition heading into the inaugural season. 

To add to the whirlwind, the league also plans to make rule changes that differ from rules in the NHL. For example, the PWHL is debating allowing two-minute penalties to continue after the opposing team scores on the power play. Many of the rule changes seem to be targeted at increasing scoring opportunities and action.

“We’re going to have to look at the data and see if it actually created more scoring chances or more goals, which of course I think is the goal,” Jayna Hefford, the PWHL’s senior vice president of hockey operations, told CBC and Radio-Canada.

“We’ll debrief the event and really understand the pros and cons, and see if it makes sense to implement any of them.”

The PWHL is also still assembling its player discipline committee and its collection of referees, both of which must be finalized before the first puck drop. The league plans to use a pool of officials from other organizations, which include the American Hockey League, Hockey Canada and USA Hockey.

As is typical in women’s hockey, body checking isn’t allowed in the PWHL, but the players still want to play a physical game. So expect no shortage of action along the boards or penalties called.

The first regular PWHL season will consist of 24 games, with international breaks included in the schedule so that players can maintain their national team commitments. The four best teams will make the playoffs and will play best-of-five series through the end of the tournament to determine a champion.

Regular-season tickets went on sale this week and, according to Hefford, sales are already out-performing projections. Toronto already has sold out all 12 home games at 2,600-seat Mattamy Athletic Centre.

“We go into this understanding that we’re building a league, we’re launching a league,” Hefford said. “We’re not going to fill every building every night, so we have pretty conservative projections, I would say. But in initial days into ticket sales we’ve exceeded our projections, which is really great news for us.”

The PWHL plans to launch merchandise soon, including replica jerseys, that should be available in arenas and in online stores.

Even before it hosts its first game, Kasten is shocked at how well the league has come together in such a short time. 

“To see it really coming together, I can’t describe it,” Kasten said. “This will be the league with the highest level of skill for women hockey players ever in the history of the world.”

The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) will open its inaugural season on New Year’s Day.

Toronto will host New York at Mattamy Athletic Centre at 12:30 p.m. ET on Monday, Jan. 1, 2024, as the first game of the new league. The other five teams in the league will host their own home openers over the next 12 days, the PWHL announced Tuesday.

  • Montreal @ Ottawa
    • When: 7 p.m. ET, Tuesday, Jan. 2
    • Where: TD Place Arena, Ottawa
  • Minnesota @ Boston
    • When: 7 p.m. ET, Wednesday, Jan. 3
    • Where: Tsongas Center, Lowell, Mass.
  • Toronto @ New York
    • When: 7 p.m. ET, Friday, Jan. 5
    • Where: Total Mortgage Arena, Bridgeport, Conn.
  • Montreal @ Minnesota
    • When: 3:30 p.m. ET, Saturday, Jan. 6
    • Where: Xcel Energy Center, St. Paul, Minn.
  • Boston @ Montreal
    • When: 3:30 p.m. ET, Saturday, Jan. 13
    • Where: Verdun Auditorium, Montreal

The announcement of the home openers doubled as the announcement of the home arenas, which range from 2,600-seat Mattamy Athletic Centre in Toronto to 18,000-seat Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn.

“Giving our athletes the opportunity to step onto the ice to compete in front of our passionate fans has been the driving force of our efforts, and it’s going to be an exciting reality on New Year’s Day,” PWHL Advisory Board member Stan Kasten said in a news release. “It’s time for the best women’s hockey players in the world to lift our game to greater heights.”

From start to finish, the Professional Women’s Hockey League is aiming for a six-month launch, which is quick. And the expected January 2024 start date is quickly approaching.

“Doing this in six months is nuts,” PWHL Advisory Board member Stan Kasten told The Athletic. “The NHL told me I was going to need more time and they were completely correct.”

That means that some things will have to fall by the wayside in the first year in favor of getting the players on the ice – including team names and logos. Jerseys for this year only have the team colors and city names diagonally across the chest. It’s been a point of contention for many fans on social media.

But to the league, team names weren’t worth slowing the process down.

“There are decisions you can make that are fast and if you make an error in your judgment on that decision, it’s easy to walk back, or you can learn from it and move on,” Amy Scheer, the senior vice president of business operations for the PWHL, told The Athletic. “From the team name perspective, it was just better off slowing the process down.

“When you come out with a team name, you want to have a full brand story, why the imagery and the logo, why the colors, why the name. And I just didn’t feel that we should rush it because you can’t walk back from it.”

In MLB, Kasten says, jerseys take about two years to produce. In the NHL, teams are sent a “uniform change form” every year in April asking for any changes in uniforms. From start to finish, that is an 18-month process.

So naturally, there wasn’t enough time to come up with an entire branding strategy, avoid name trademarks, and have jerseys to match in the time that the PWHL wanted to launch.

“In a normal team or league, this is a two-year process,” Scheer said. “Just getting the design is six to eight months. The actual manufacturing takes over a year.”

“Things would be prettier, more perfect if we had waited a year,” Kasten said. “But what was most important was getting a league up and running for all these women who had been waiting for this day for so long.”