Five games played, only two goals against and a whopping 46 goals for.
That’s the stat line for the Canadian women who won Olympic hockey gold in Turin, Italy in 2006.
That Canadian team had it all. There was the star power of Hockey Hall of Famer Hayley Wickenheiser, who scored 17 points in just five games. Her single-tournament points record wasn’t eclipsed until 2022, when Sarah Nurse broke the record.
Behind the scoring, there was smothering defence, and two bonafide starting goaltenders to choose from in Quebeckers Kim St-Pierre and Charline Labonté.
There was also a strong core of leaders, including the captain, Cassie Campbell-Pascall, the underrated Vicky Sunohara, and many others in between.
For the first, and only time, the gold medal match-up featured a non-North American team. Canada defeated Sweden 4-1 to win a second consecutive Olympic championship.
Some have argued the Canadians didn’t face stiff competition on their way to gold, since they never played the Americans.
But Cheryl Pounder, a defender on that team and a TSN hockey analyst, disagreed.
“Whether we had played the United States or Sweden, I do believe we would have been successful,” Pounder said.
As the Olympics return to Italy for Milano-Cortina 2026, two decades after the Games in Turin, CBC Sports gathered interviews with members of the 2006 Canadian team over the last year.
One word came up often: dominant.
“It was the greatest team that I’ve ever been a part of,” Pounder said.
A mix of rookies and veterans
The Canadians went into the Olympics in Turin in a much different position than in 2002, when they were underdogs.
In those Games, Canada won the country’s first Olympic championship. They followed it up with a world championship in 2004 in Halifax.
The 2006 roster was filled with a mix of veterans from that 2002 team, including Campbell-Pascall, Wickenheiser, St-Pierre, Sunohara, Cherie Piper and Becky Kellar, to name a few.
There were also up-and-coming young players, like Meghan Agosta, who turned 19 during the tournament.
“It was probably one of the best Canadian teams on paper,” Ouellette told CBC Sports last year. “We had an incredible mix of young players and veterans. We had an incredible season, dominating from start to finish. That didn’t mean that it was easier. Our coaches really prepared us well. They prepared us the hard way.”
Ouellette, a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame who’s now an assistant coach on the Canadian team she once played on, said she learned a lot about leadership that season from players like Campbell-Pascall and Sunohara.
Gina Kingsbury was also a wide-eyed rookie who was eager to soak up wisdom in her first Olympics, after being cut from the 2002 team.
Twenty years later, the experience of being at the Olympics is more fresh in her mind than the games she played.
“It was just everything else that was just grandiose for me,” Kingsbury said last year. “I remember the opening ceremonies and how I felt becoming officially an Olympian.”
Like Ouellette, Kingsbury will be heading to Milano-Cortina 2026 as a member of Team Canada. She’s the general manager of the national women’s team.
“I thought we were one of the best teams I think Canada has put on the ice,” Kingsbury said. “We were young and eager, and we never got a chance to play the U.S. in the final game. But I thought we were a dominant team.”
Connected on the ice
Canada floated through the preliminary round, defeating Italy, Russia and Sweden easily.
In the semifinals, Canada shut out the Finns, 6-0.
Part of the success came from a team that carried over valuable lessons from 2002. Every player knew their role and played it, Pounder said.
“You have the selflessness of Vicky Sunohara, who was the glue between the top line and someone who may play a few minutes,” she said. “There was the great Cassie Campbell-Pascall, who wore the captaincy and wasn’t afraid to push the buttons at the right time. And then of course, the Hayley Wickenheisers, the Cherie Pipers of the world.”
On the back end, the Canadians only brought five defenders to play in Italy because Ouellette could play both forward and defence. Pounder and Kellar formed a shutdown pair.
“We were always together, connected in every zone, and it just carried us forward right from the defensive end, right through the neutral zone into the offensive zone,” Pounder said. “Every piece of the puzzle just wanted to do their role to the best of their ability, knowing what their strengths were.”
A Swedish brick wall
The Canadian team was talented. But you can’t talk about the 2006 Olympics without talking about Kim Martin Hasson.
The 19-year-old Swedish goaltender was a big part of the reasons why her team was able to upset the Americans in the semifinals. She made 37 saves in the win, and was later named the tournament’s top goaltender.
“She was outstanding,” Kingsbury said.
The Swedes had been down 2-0 before two goals from Maria Rooth tied it. She added another goal in the shootout en route to Sweden’s first appearance in the gold medal game.
The Canadian team was set to play its semifinal after the Sweden-U.S. game, and Kingsbury remembered the players being glued to the game. They didn’t want to look away to warm up.
“It’s like, oh my God, are the Americans actually going to lose?” Kingsbury said. “[Martin Hasson] stood on her head that game. You had Maria Rooth and you had Erika Holst and you had a really great Swedish team that year. It was pretty exciting and definitely unorthodox to not have the Americans in the gold medal game.”
Outside North America, it was a huge breakthrough and a sign of the growth of the game since it had made its Olympic debut in 1998. It’s something Wickenheiser described years later as “a great thing for women’s hockey.”
But the Canadians found a way to beat the talented Swedish teenager, winning the Olympic final, 4-1. A first-period goal from Ouellette held up as the winner, and the Swedes managed only eight shots on goal.
“I think that it probably was one of the best teams we’ve ever iced,” Wickenheiser said. “Just some great players, a lot of depth. We really seemed to dominate that Olympics.”
In Pounder’s mind, the team just had something special that’s hard to replicate.
“Every once in a while you get just so fortunate to be part of a group that’s bigger than yourself and you don’t know how you got there,” Pounder said. “I think we’d all be GMs and we’d be making a jillion dollars if we had the special sauce that we could bottle. But to me, we just had it. We won together, and it’s moment I’ll never forget.”
Twenty years later, the Canadians return to Italy as Olympic champions, looking to repeat at the top of the podium. And this time around, there might be less surprise to see a European team like rising Czechia or steady Finland break through to the gold medal game. Thanks to the PWHL, several stars on those teams play regularly with the best from North America.
Canada begins its tournament on Feb. 5 against Finland.
