BEIJING — When the puck drops here Tuesday afternoon on the latest edition of the Winter Olympics’ fiercest rivalry, former United States captain Meghan Duggan will be parked behind a computer at her Connecticut home, cheering on the women’s hockey team alongside fellow alumni at a virtual watch party that she helped put together. Her wife will not be invited.
“We’ve talked about it,” Duggan says. “It’s going to be separate rooms, separate TVs, I think.”
Even in the wider sports world, few matchups contain the raw passion and tension that is conjured every quadrennial when the U.S. and Canada face off. Consider: The two sides have met in all but one of six Olympic women’s hockey finals since the sport was introduced in 1998; no other nation has captured gold. The 2014 final in Sochi went to overtime. The '18 final in PyeongChang required a shootout. And that is without mentioning the semi-annual IIHF world championships, where their average per-game goal differential over the past decade is a mere 1.6. “It’s heated,” three-time Olympic champion Gillian Apps says. “It’s amazing.”
