HERNING, Denmark – Canada’s National Women’s Team won its 12th gold medal at the IIHF Women’s World Championship, earning a close 2-1 win over the United States on Sunday night.
Brianne Jenner (Oakville, Ont./PWHPA) broke a scoreless game at the 9:30 mark of the second period, finishing off a passing play fromMarie-Philip Poulin (Beauceville, Que./PWHPA) and Ella Shelton (Ingersoll, Ont./PWHPA) to give Canada the lead. The goal would be her 100th international point, tying her with Cassie Campbell-Pascall and Gillian Apps for 13th all-time with Canada’s National Women’s Team. Jenner would make it a 2-0 lead just 1:24 later with her second of the game.
A late power-play in the second period for the U.S. would cut into Canada’s lead as Abby Roque would put one behind Ann-Renée Desbiens (Clermont, Que./PWHPA) to make it a 2-1 game after 40 minutes. Both sides would have chances to score in the third, including the U.S. who pulled netminder Nicole Hensley with just over two-and-a-half minutes to go in the game, but Desbiens would shut the door for the 2-1 Canada win.
“It’s always nice to get on the board first,” Jenner says. “We always had the mindset that we were going to find a way to get the job done. It felt good just to get on the board and our energy jumped up after that. I think the second period was probably our strongest of the game and really set the tone for the game. It feels amazing and it’s probably the hardest [gold medal] of the last three (2021 Worlds and the Beijing Winter Olympics), the U.S. was hungry and it’s hard to three-peat. It’s going to be even harder to defend it in April and we know the road doesn’t get any easier, but we’re committed and throughout our whole lineup we have people that will do anything for the team, so it was great to find a way to get it done.”
Following the tournament, Sarah Fillier (Georgetown, Ont./Princeton University, ECAC) was named to the Media All-Star Team.
“It feels good, and the best part is the way the team won, they found a different way to win,” says Troy Ryan (Spryfield, N.S.) “I mentioned it to a couple of players, you put that in the bank and it’s something you can draw on down the road. Maybe when things aren’t clicking as they should be, you always have a Worlds like this to say it doesn’t matter, there’s other ways you can dig down, be physical, play a little grittier. It’s just nice for this team to have that in the bank and know they can draw on it.”
Canada was 3-0-0-1 through the preliminary round, finishing second in the Group A standings with wins over Finland, Japan and Switzerland before losing to the U.S. in the final preliminary game. Canada earned a trip to the gold medal game with an 3-0 shutout of Sweden in the quarterfinals and an 8-1 semifinal win over Switzerland.
Canada has captured 12 gold medals at the IIHF Women’s World Championship (1990, 1992, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2012, 2021, 2022) in addition to eight silver (2005, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017) and one bronze (2019).
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