The women’s Olympic hockey tournament opens on Thursday in Milan, Italy with a four-game slate highlighted by the U.S. taking on Czechia at 10:40 a.m. Eastern, and Canada taking on Finland at 3:10 p.m.<\/p>\n
Canada is coming into the tournament as the defending champions, defeating the U.S. in the gold medal game in 2022.<\/p>\n
What storylines are there to follow on the women’s side in these Games? Here are some notable ones and other things to know:<\/p>\n
\u2022 U.S. captain Hilary Knight\u00a0is looking to go out on a high note after she announced last spring that this will be her fifth and final Olympics. She won three silvers and one gold in her previous four appearances.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u2022 Canada’s captain Marie-Philip Poulin\u00a0will also be playing in her fifth Olympics. Known as “Captain Clutch,” she’s had the gold-medal winning goal in three of her previous four Olympic appearances. She’s coming into the tournament one goal shy of tying Hayley Wickenheiser\u00a0for the most goals in Olympic women’s hockey. Poulin, at 34, hasn’t said either way if this will be her final Olympics.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The U.S. has beaten Canada in their last six matchups, a slate that includes the exhibition Rivalry Series, a series of exhibition games played across North America.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Canada is bringing back much of the gold-medal winning squad from 2022. The U.S. has gotten younger, with only 11 returning players from 2022. The U.S. roster includes seven players still in college.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Four of the women on the U.S. are products of the Penguins Elite program: Laila Edwards, Hannah Bilka, Ava McNaughton\u00a0and Gweneth Philips.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0The gold medal game is expected to come down to the U.S. and Canada again, but Czechia and Finland are the other two teams closest to medaling, with Germany and Sweden not far behind.<\/p>\n
\u2022 One fun thing to watch: Sweden’s Anna Kjellbin and Finland’s Ronja Savolainen are engaged to be married. They’re rivals in the PWHL too, with Kjellbin playing for Toronto and Savolainen for Ottawa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The women’s Olympic hockey tournament opens on Thursday in Milan, Italy with a four-game slate highlighted by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5113],"tags":[32654,5,4,118,99,1469,100,5216],"class_list":{"0":"post-446869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-penguins","8":"tag-feed-article","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-penguins","12":"tag-penguins-news","13":"tag-pittsburgh","14":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","15":"tag-pittsburghpenguins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116017693216994126","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}