The Women’s Olympic Hockey Final Is a Sapphic Soap Opera

At this point, it feels like the whole world is just trying to live inside some fanfic version of Heated Rivalry. At the Milan Cortina Olympics, women’s ice hockey has given it a sapphic break-up spin. 

On Wednesday, Team USA and Team Canada will play for gold in one of the most ~heated~ matchups of these Olympic Games. As ESPN notes, the only two countries to have won women’s hockey gold at the Olympics are the U.S. and Canada since it was added in 1998. Canada beat Team USA 3-2 at the 2022 Beijing Olympics—but the Americans are the big favorites this time and have been dominating the tournament. They destroyed Canada 5-0 in their first match-up earlier in the Games. 

“Knowing the pressure of that moment, the energy in the building, it’s going to be different,” Kendall Coyne Schofield, who’s playing in her fourth Olympics, told ESPN. “But really it’s just about emptying the tank. Whatever you have left. It’s a long tournament, just empty it. Go out there and give it your best. That’s all you can do.” Great! LFG!

Behind the scenes, rumors have circled for months that Team USA’s Caroline Harvey and Team Canada’s Daryl Watts have secretly been dating. To be crystal clear: this has never been confirmed, and neither player has publicly identified their sexuality. We are firmly in internet-sleuth territory here.

Still, the rumor mill kicked into overdrive this week, with fans speculating that the two may have broken up in the middle of the Olympics.

“A USA Hockey star and her Hockey Canada gf breaking up before the Gold Medal Game is levels of lesbianism once thought to be incomprehensible,” one person tweeted on Tuesday.

The same day, the Sporting News noted that Harvey’s teammate recently referred to her as single in a TikTok, while other internet sleuths reported that she deleted all the photos of her and Watts from Instagram. Whether or not they were dating, deleting photos is a specific choice. But it’s also possible we are all wildly projecting here.

Because while we’ve all seen what happens when two star hockey players are secretly dating, we haven’t seen what happens when two star hockey players rumored to be dating are rumored to have broken up right before playing each other for Olympic gold. And that is also an HBO-worthy saga. 

On the much more celebratory end of the relationship spectrum, Team USA’s hockey captain Hillary Knight proposed to her girlfriend, speedskater Brittany Bowe, on Tuesday; they first met at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. So, a lot of different emotions going into Wednesday’s game.

So may the best team (Team USA!!!!) win. And may everyone mute their mentions.

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