HERNING, Denmark — The Canada-USA rivalry will take center stage in the 2026 IIHF Women’s World Championship gold medal game on Monday, just nine months after the U.S. beat Canada for Olympic gold.
Both powerhouse programs booked their tickets to the championship game after advancing through Sunday’s semifinals.
Team USA eliminated Finland 5-0 in the first matchup of the day at Kvik Hockey Arena. The Finns had a solid start early in the first period, only allowing the dominant U.S. offense — which set a single-game record with 85 shots in Friday’s 14-0 quarterfinal rout of Denmark — to muster one shot on goalie Sanni Ahola through the first six minutes of the game.
Kelly Pannek eventually scored the opening goal for the top-seeded Americans, followed by Alex Carpenter’s fourth goal of the tournament nearly 10 minutes later. Finland managed to keep the game close until Team USA scored three goals in under two minutes — from Caroline Harvey, Lacey Eden and captain Hilary Knight — in the second period to push the game out of reach and chase Ahola from the crease for the final frame.
With her second-period goal, Harvey broke her own record for points by a defender at a single Women’s World Championship. The 2026 PWHL first-overall pick is up to 15 points through six games, and her 54 career points at the tournament are already an all-time high for an American defender. After the game, Harvey was officially presented with the 2025-26 IIHF Female Player of the Year trophy, which she won in June.
Taylor Fox (née Heise) also moved up the record books with her 12th assist of the tournament, tying the single-tournament record long held by Hockey Hall of Fame forward Cindy Curley, who tallied 12 assists in the first-ever IIHF-sanctioned women’s worlds in 1990.
Later on Sunday night, Team Canada beat Sweden 3-0.
Swedish starting goalie Ebba Svensson Träff kept Canada off the scoresheet in the first period and made 17-straight saves before star forward Sarah Fillier finally broke the stalemate 27 minutes into the game. Fillier started the tournament day-to-day with an injury and missed Canada’s first two games of the tournament. Since returning, she’s scored four goals and five points in four games.
“(Fillier) is still getting into the rhythm of everything,” head coach Kori Cheverie said on Friday. “But, (I) love the way that she does show up in big moments and finds a way to put it in the back of the net.”
Ottawa Charge forward Sarah Wozniewicz, playing in her first major international tournament, doubled the lead before the end of the second period. Emma Maltais scored Canada’s third and final goal in the third.
With the results, Finland and Sweden will play for bronze at 9 a.m. ET on Monday. The Finns have won back-to-back bronze medals at women’s worlds. Sweden, meanwhile, will follow up its fourth-place finish at the Milan Olympics with its first appearance in a women’s worlds bronze medal game since 2009.
Canada and the U.S. will meet in the championship game at 1 p.m. ET. It will be the 24th time in 25 tournaments that the two rivals will play for gold at women’s worlds — and their first high-stakes clash since Megan Keller’s overtime winner clinched Olympic gold for the Americans in Milan back in February.
Team USA will be the favorite as the reigning Olympic and world champions. The Americans are riding a 20-game win streak in international competition that dates back to the opening game of the 2025 Women’s World Championship in Czechia. At this year’s tournament, they have steamrolled opponents 50-2 — just three goals shy of tying the program record for goals in a single tournament — and are averaging 8.3 goals per game. Eight of the top-10 scorers in the tournament (Harvey, Fox, Knight, Casey O’Brien, Laila Edwards, Joy Dunne, Tessa Janecke and Pannek) are American.
For Canada, on the other hand, this tournament has been Step 1 in the program’s new era. Cheverie and general manager Danièle Sauvageau executed an overhaul of the roster, assembling a younger group — down from 29 in Milan to 26 — with seven players who made their international debuts in Denmark.
“At the beginning of any quad, you have an opportunity to try different things and to look at different players, and maybe cast your net quite wide to see what you have,” Cheverie explained. “And that’s the stage that we’re in.”
Whether their rivals are retooling or not, Fox and her teammates know that “anything can happen” in a winner-takes-all game against Team Canada. And that the records set in the prelims won’t matter if they don’t win the game that matters most.
“When I was here in ’22, I had all these points in the prelims and didn’t have a point in the championship — and we lost,” said Fox, who won tournament MVP in 2022. “And that’s what I’ll remember.
“We’ve done so well (this year), but we’ll never rest on our laurels.”
This story will be updated.