There’s little doubt that girls’s hockey has change into one of the crucial exciting sports within the Milan Winter Olympics, and it would be difficult for any of the sports to top the finish of the Team USA 2-1 time beyond regulation victory over archrival Canada that brought the Americans the gold medal of their sport.
Wayne Gretzky on the expansion of ladies’s hockey: “One in all the things I’m most happy with, and didn’t even come from me, but my dad was an enormous believer in women’s sports. And he had one in all the very first women’s hockey tournaments in Brantford, Ontario, way back within the mid-80s.” pic.twitter.com/1EH6W0nAAO
— Scott Robertson (@sarobertsonca) February 19, 2026
It took a late tying goal by Hilary Knight to send the sport to the additional session while Megan Keller won the sport with a slick backhand shot past Canadian goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens. That dramatic shot was the tournament’s golden goal and it gave the US their third gold medal in women’s hockey. Canada has won the opposite 5 gold medals which have been awarded in the game.
While his native country couldn’t hold on to a late lead, the game’s all-time leading scorer is an enormous supporter of ladies’s hockey. Wayne Gretzky said he has seen tremendous growth in women’s sports including golf, tennis and hockey, and he thinks those sports will only get larger.
Gretzky said he is a large women’s sports fan and he believes that a number of the top players are implausible athletes. He also credited his late father, Walter Gretzky, for providing him with a love of ladies’s sports.
“One in all the things I’m most happy with, and didn’t even come from me, but my dad was an enormous believer in women’s sports,” Gretzky explained. “And he had one in all the very first women’s hockey tournaments in Brantford, Ontario, way back within the mid-80s.”