A very hard-fought game, where Canada triumphed by the score of 2-0 to take the gold. Although the only goals were scored by Marie-Philip Poulin, for my money the star of the game was goalie Shannon Szabados:

The Canadian women’s hockey team defended the gold medals won at the 2002 and 2006 Olympic Games with a 2-0 win over archrival U.S. on Thursday at Canada Hockey Place.

Marie-Philip Poulin of Beauceville, Que., the youngest player on the Canadian team at 18, scored a pair of goals in the first period, showing off her soft hands and quick release. Edmonton goaltender Shannon Szabados stopped all 28 shots for the shutout.

Szabados was an intriguing choice in net for her first start in an Olympic or world championship final. Davidson went with the 23-year-old from Edmonton over veterans Charline Labonte, the winning goalie in the 2006 Olympic final, and Kim St. Pierre, the starter in the 2002 championship game.

Szabados showed no rookie nerves to start the game, however. She came out of her net to play the puck and made glove saves with confidence. She kept the Americans off the scoreboard during five-on-three chances at the start of both the first and second periods. U.S. goalie Jessie Vetter made 27 saves.

Centre Meghan Agosta of Ruthven, Ont., was named tournament MVP.

Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images

With this gold medal, Canada has now earned more gold than in any previous Winter Olympics (8, with the previous highs being 7 at both 2006 and 2002 games).

Nancy Macdonald has an article up at Macleans about our favourite hockey player, Cherie Piper:

It all started with an ugly injury in a college game between her Dartmouth Big Green and Providence four years ago. When she tore her ACL, she says, everyone at the New Hampshire rink heard the “pop.” It came midway through Piper’s final NCAA season — just nine months after her triumphant return from Turin, where Canada won gold and she finished second on the team in scoring. Following surgery, Piper didn’t get back on the ice for six months, and missed a full year with the national squad.

And just as she was regaining her fitness and timing, her dad Alan died of a heart attack; he’d been Piper’s coach and mentor, had first put her on skates at age eight in a Toronto boys’ league, and ferried her across the city to games for years. “It was tough to finish the season,” says Piper, then with the Mississauga Chiefs of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. The rink was no longer a refuge; hockey suddenly became a grim reminder of all she’d lost.

[. . .]

In the summer of 2008, she left Ontario for Calgary, joining the Oval X-Treme of the Western Women’s Hockey League, to focus solely on hockey. But it was too late. Last year, she was cut from Canada’s roster for the World Championships in Finland, where Poulin got her start with Team Canada. Piper, a two-time gold medallist, was devastated and considered giving up the game altogether. At the time, coach Mel Davidson didn’t know whether Piper would pack it in and go home, or “dig in, and say ‘Mel, you made a mistake and I’m going to prove it to you.’ ”

Cherie and her teammates take on the US women’s team for the gold medal tonight. We’re certainly going to be watching and cheering.

The men may be struggling (just scraping through against the Swiss yesterday), but the women are doing their best juggernaut imitation. It’s getting lots of attention, but not always the kind the organizers were hoping for. After their 18-0 demolition of the Slovak team to open the tournament, they’ve handily beaten the Swiss (10-1) and the Swedes (13-1).

I don’t follow hockey at all, but I’ve been trying to catch these games, as Elizabeth’s god-daughter is Cherie Piper:

One sign of just how dominating Canada has been in the preliminary round of the Winter Olympic women’s ice hockey tournament is that Scarborough native Cherie Piper has nine points in three games — and she’s only in fifth place in scoring. And that’s just on her own team.

Canada rolled through their opposition, like a hair dryer through snow, outscoring their opposition 41-2, defeating, in order, Slovakia 18-0, Switzerland 10-1 and Sweden 13-1.

And through that the Scarborough native contributed a ‘modest’ four goals and five assists.

Piper already has two Olympic gold medals to her credit, including the last time around in Turin where she was co-leader in goals-scored and second in total points for the tournament.

Their preliminary round is over, and they’ll be facing the 2nd place team from the other pool (either the US or Finland). Sweden, the other team to advance will face the 1st place team.

Update: It’ll be Canada vs Finland, US vs Sweden. Winner of each game goes to the gold medal match, losers go to the bronze medal match.