The Women's Room: USA has won eight straight. The rivalry is fine

The best rivalry in hockey has a losing streak in it now, and I think that's the healthiest thing that's happened to it in a decade. Eight straight for the Americans sounds like the end of something. It's the start of the part worth watching.

Canada and the United States skate in Windsor tonight for the first time since the Milan final. They do it again Friday in Plymouth, then fly to Denmark for a Worlds that puts them in separate groups and, if the seeding holds, in the same building on Nov. 16.

The series is 195 games old, and Canada still leads it 106-88-1. The last eight all went one way.

So this month's Room is about the rivalry itself: what the streak is, what it isn't, and why the next three weeks will tell us whether this is a cycle or a changing of the guard.

Rivalry file: it always runs in streaks

Rivalry file: Nobody has ever owned this thing for long. The Americans won the first Olympic gold in Nagano in 1998, and Canada answered with four straight Olympic golds, three of them over the Americans in the final. Sochi in 2014 was the worst of them for anyone in a USA sweater.

The U.S. led 2-0 in the third period. Brianne Jenner scored, Marie-Philip Poulin tied it in the last minute, and Poulin won it on the power play in overtime.

Then the pendulum swung. The U.S. won four straight Worlds finals over Canada from 2013 to 2017, three of them by a goal, two in overtime. Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson beat Shannon Szabados in the 2018 shootout and Maddie Rooney stopped Meghan Agosta for gold.

Canada took it back in Beijing in 2022, and won three of four Worlds from 2021 to 2024, two in overtime.

That's the pattern. One country gets the better of the other for four or five years, then the rosters turn over and the other side gets its run. Twenty-three of the 24 Worlds finals have been these two teams. The margins have never moved.

What eight straight actually looks like

The streak started in Ceske Budejovice in April 2025. Canada outshot the Americans 47-30 in that final, Sarah Fillier tied it with under six minutes left, and Tessa Janecke won it at 17:06 of overtime.

Gwyneth Philips got the win in relief after Aerin Frankel left following a collision with Laura Stacey in the third. That's not a rout. That's a coin flip Canada lost.

Then the Rivalry Series happened. Four games, four American wins, by a combined 24-7 by our count: 4-1, 6-1, 10-4 and 4-1. That's the part of the streak that should worry Canada, because that's the part with no overtime in it.

Milan split the difference. The Americans beat Canada 5-0 in the preliminary round and went 7-0 for the tournament, outscoring the field 33-2.

Then the final was a one-goal game again. Kristin O'Neill scored shorthanded 54 seconds into the second, Frankel made 30 saves and Ann-Renee Desbiens 31, and Hilary Knight tipped a Laila Edwards point shot with 2:04 left and the net empty. Megan Keller ended it on a backhand at 4:07 of overtime.

"When you have a one-goal deficit against Canada, you have to find the back of the net," Knight said.

So here's the honest read on the streak. The two games that handed out medals were both won in overtime, by a team that needed a last-minute goal to get there in one of them.

The four games that didn't hand out medals were lopsided. Depth is where the Americans have pulled away. The top end is still a coin flip.

What changed: one team turned the page, the other kept reading

The gap now is in the rooms, not on the scoreboard, and it opened in a span of three weeks this fall.

Canada named a 25-player roster for Denmark with seven Worlds debutants and 13 holdovers from the Milan silver-medal team. The average age is 25.8, down from 29.2 at the Olympics, which by our count is a team 3.4 years younger in eight months.

Poulin is out after knee surgery. Jenner and Jocelyne Larocque were left off. Natalie Spooner, Sarah Nurse, Blayre Turnbull and Emerance Maschmeyer couldn't attend selection camp. Rosalie Tremblay and Hayley McDonald are 18. Chloe Primerano is 19.

I wrote last week that Canada picked the right November to get younger, and I'll stand on it. But look at what's across the ice.

The Americans brought 31 players to their final camp in Plymouth, and it's almost the same 31 from the first camp in Minnesota.

Knight is still there with the U.S. Olympic scoring record. Caroline Harvey was the tournament MVP in Milan. Keller, Edwards, Abbey Murphy, Janecke, Philips, Frankel: that's a core in its prime, and 28 of the 31 play in the PWHL.

The one notable cut was Grace Dwyer, a first-round pick who couldn't crack a forward group this deep in October. That camp roster is a title defense, not a tryout.

The benches tell the same story. USA Hockey extended John Wroblewski through the 2030 Olympics last Friday, four years into a job that has produced two Worlds golds and the Milan title.

Hockey Canada named Kori Cheverie its head coach on Sept. 24, after Troy Ryan's departure, and Denmark is her first tournament in the big chair. She has Caroline Ouellette and Kris Sparre beside her, Bruce Cassidy advising GM Danièle Sauvageau, and Manon Rheaume as an assistant GM.

That's not a knock on Cheverie. She won a Walter Cup in Montreal and sat on the Canadian bench in Beijing and at three Worlds.

It's just the shape of the thing: one program is running it back with the same coach, the same leaders and the same crease; the other is on its first roster, its first coach and its first November without Poulin.

"There will be players who have never played the U.S. before at this level," Cheverie said.

The crease is the whole argument

If you want one reason the streak holds in Denmark, it's Frankel. Her Milan line was four wins, a 0.39 goals-against average, a .979 save percentage and three shutouts in five games.

The Americans didn't allow a goal for 352:17, across six games, until O'Neill's shorthander in the final. They killed all 14 of their penalties in the tournament, including three in the gold-medal game against the tournament's best power play.

Behind Frankel the U.S. brought four goalies to camp: Philips, Ava McNaughton of Wisconsin, and Callie Shanahan of the Sirens, the one real add. That's a program auditioning its next starter in a Canada game nine days before a Worlds. Canada's crease is Desbiens, Kayle Osborne and Eve Gascon, who's still at school.

Desbiens has been as good as anyone in these games. She made 31 saves in Milan and 26 in Ceske Budejovice, and Canada lost both in overtime. At some point the goalie can't be the plan.

What Denmark can and can't settle

The Worlds run Nov. 6-16. The Americans are in Group A in Esbjerg with Czechia, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Canada is in Group B in Herning with Finland, Sweden, Japan and the host Danes.

The quarterfinals are Nov. 13, the semifinals Nov. 15, and the final is Nov. 16 at KVIK Hockey Arena, which holds 4,120.

The tournament moved from April to November so the PWHL wouldn't have to stop for three weeks in the spring, and the PWHL is where 28 American campers and 19 Canadian roster players go back to work when the season opens Dec. 5.

That's the detail that makes this version of the rivalry different from the one Poulin grew up in. The two teams used to see each other a few times a year.

Now Harvey plays in Vancouver, Edwards and Sloane Matthews in San Jose, Keller and Frankel in Boston, and the Rivalry Series blowouts happened between women who'd be PWHL teammates and opponents a few weeks later.

The gap between the programs has never been smaller on a Tuesday night in January. It's the November and February gaps that are growing.

So, two things can be true. The streak is real, and it's mostly a depth story: the Americans have a second and third line that can win a Rivalry Series game 10-4, and Canada is rebuilding its second and third lines in public, at a Worlds.

And the rivalry is fine. It's never been settled by a streak. It's been settled by whoever has the next Poulin, and Canada just put her on the roster at 19 to find out.

The W read

The W read: Canada wins one of this week's two, probably Friday, because Cheverie will get a look at the kids tonight and tighten it up by Plymouth.

Then the Americans win Denmark by two goals in a final that gets to the third period tied, and the streak is nine or ten by the time anyone counts it. That's my call, and I'll grade it on Nov. 16.

What I'm actually watching is Primerano's minutes against Knight's line. If Cheverie plays her 20 a night in Herning and she's still standing in the final, Canada has its next run coming.

If she's sheltered, the streak has a few more years in it. Either way, we'll know more about 2030 by the middle of November than we did in Milan.