Marie-Philip Poulin didn’t win another Olympic gold. She’s still the greatest of all time
· Yahoo Sports
MILAN — There will be all sorts of debates in the aftermath of the Canadian women’s hockey team’s 2-1 overtime loss against the United States in the Olympic gold medal game.
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There will be questions about the way the team was constructed and the way players were deployed. People will wonder how Canada is going to turn things around for 2030 against a young American core that will only get better with age.
The debate you can’t have is about Marie-Philip Poulin, her greatness and her place in the history of the sport. That much is secure. Canada’s captain handled that a long time ago.
No player has risen to the occasion more than Poulin, who burst onto the international scene in 2010 and began her meteoric rise through the sport. Back then, at just 18 years old, trying to soak in her first-ever Olympics, Poulin scored two goals in less than three minutes against the U.S. to lead Canada to her first gold medal.
It was Poulin’s first clutch moment, but certainly not her last. Now 34, Poulin has scored the game-winning goal in three Olympics, and she’s the only player to score in four consecutive gold medal games at the tournament. You don’t even need to add her overtime winner at the 2021 world championships for Poulin to be completely peerless.
“She’s had an impact in every final she’s ever played in,” said Canada’s coach Troy Ryan.
In the Olympic semifinals in Milan, Poulin did what she always has – score when Canada needed her most, with a two-goal performance to secure Canada’s entrance to a gold medal game nobody thought it could win.
“People did not believe in us,” Poulin said. “We knew it was going to be a battle. We came up short, but I’m truly proud.”
Canada executed their game plan to near perfection, fending off the younger, more dynamic Americans for almost 58 minutes. Then, U.S. captain Hilary Knight got her final — and perhaps biggest — Olympic moment, tying the game with 2:04 remaining.
Nobody played more minutes for Canada in overtime than Poulin, who fired one shot in the extra frame, just two minutes before defender Megan Keller dangled around Claire Thompson and beat goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens to win the game. It was the first time in five Olympic finals that Poulin did not score.
“It would have been a hell of a story,” she said after the game.
While the Americans celebrated, Poulin hugged every single one of her Canadian teammates, some of them playing in their first Olympics – and many playing in their last. In the handshake line, Poulin and Knight, who have gone head-to-head since 2009, pushing the game forward along the way, embraced for the last time at the Olympics.
“She’s a tremendous human being, an amazing player, a generational player,” Knight said. “I have the utmost respect for her, just being on different sides of the coin and understanding what one another has to go through to be on this stage and continue to perform at a high level for so long is just truly incredible.
“You saw that going through the handshake line and just embracing and understanding.”
Even American forward Abbey Murphy, known for her skill and ability to agitate the Canadians specifically, stopped Poulin to have a word.
“You play Canada so many times in this rivalry, it looks like you don’t like a lot of people. … But MPP’s a legend,” she said. “She’s one of the great players to do it, and I just wanted to tell her that, when it didn’t really seem like (it) on this long journey, I respected her. It’s there. It always was there.
“I just wanted to tell her that I loved watching her. I looked up to her, but you can never show that in a game.”
That Poulin even played in Thursday’s gold medal game would have been a shock 10 days ago after she left Canada’s second game of the tournament in obvious pain due to a knee injury. She returned in the quarterfinals and scored three goals in two games en route to the Olympic final. According to Renata Fast, Poulin never revealed to her teammates just how much pain she was playing through.
“I didn’t want to be a distraction,” Poulin said.
The injury very well might have stopped Poulin from scoring yet another golden goal, or even just finding the back of the net on Thursday. But that result doesn’t dampen the fact that she is the greatest big-game performer the sport has to offer – and the best women’s hockey player to ever.
No Canadian has ever played more games at an Olympics than Poulin, who joined Hockey Hall of Fame forwards Jayna Hefford and Hayley Wickenheiser as the only three Canadian hockey players to win five Olympic medals; Knight is the sole American and just the third player all-time to do it.
In her semifinal performance, bad knee and all, Poulin became the highest scoring player ever at the Olympics with her 19th and 20th career goals. Even that feat was just “icing on the cake,” said Ryan.
“It’s probably the best part of my entire coaching career to have a front row seat to some of the magic that she’s been able to provide for our team and for the country,” he said. “There really are no words to describe what she means to our program, what she means to hockey in general. (She’s) a special player, a special person, an unbelievable leader.
“There are a lot of players who aspire or strive towards being a great player and a lot of players can reach it in short, little windows. But for someone to have the longevity that she has had and the impact that she’s had is unprecedented.”
Of course, after Thursday night’s game, some will think that Knight deserves the GOAT title.
The problem with this type of debate is that you end up disparaging the second best player of all-time. Knight is unequivocally on women’s hockey’s Mount Rushmore. There’s a plaque waiting to be enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame the moment she’s eligible.
Knight has the world championship medals (15) and records (67 goals and 120 points). But on the sport’s grandest stage, Poulin has more Olympic gold medals (3), more goals (20) and more points (39).
To go a bit deeper: Twelve of Poulin’s 20 Olympic goals – that’s 60 percent – have come in the knockout stages. She’s scored eight goals in eight games against the U.S., Canada’s toughest competition.
Meanwhile, Knight has scored six of her 15 career goals at the Olympics in the knockout stages – and just three in eight games against Canada.
Knight met the moment brilliantly on Thursday. Poulin has done it more, and she didn’t need another gold medal to cement her status or settle any sort of debate.
And while Knight announced that Milan Cortina would be her fifth and final Olympics, Poulin, 34, has made no such claim. Asked about her Olympic future just 90 minutes after the gold medal game ended, a silver medal hanging from her neck, Poulin said she had not decided whether this was her final showing.
To rule Poulin out for Nice 2030 – where she will be the same age Canadian men’s captain Sidney Crosby (38) is in Milan – would be guesswork while Poulin is still playing excellent hockey, and has given us no real reason to believe that will change over the next four years.
But if the sight of Poulin consoling her teammates was indeed her last Olympic moment, it will be the end of the greatest Olympic career the sport has ever seen.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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