Let’s start with the big story of the day, Canada beat the USA to take home gold at the 2022 Olympic Games. It was a night of fast, relentless hockey, huge goals, tight finishes, and history rewritten. We had a preview before the game with a live thread of the action, and a recap after the game to close out our live coverage of this incredible tournament.

“Team Canada defeated Team USA 3-2 to win gold in Women’s Ice Hockey at the 2022 Olympics. Sarah Nurse opened the scoring, creating history in doing so, while Captain Clutch Marie-Philip Poulin scored two more, including the Golden Goal to return gold back to Canada. Ann-Renee Desbiens stopped 38 of 40 shots for the win for her first gold medal.”

I want to thank everyone for reading, commenting, and encouraging me to stay up late and cover all these games. It’s the first time I’ve covered a tournament of this scope before and I truly hope it’s not the last. Women’s Worlds are expected to happen this summer, alongside the U18s, which we have more news about below.

In Leafs news, the team claimed Adam Brooks back off waivers after losing him to Montreal early in the season. Everything you need to know about this transaction — including what it means for Nick Ritchie — can be found in our news post here.

“It is also mentioned in the comments that the Leafs cannot send Brooks to the AHL after claiming him despite putting him on waivers earlier in the season. That rule is only for the team that the player was most recently on, so Montreal. Good to remember for the future when we get Ritchie or Nikita Soshnikov on waivers next February.”

Speaking of Nick Ritchie, he made his Toronto Marlies debut last night, scoring a goal early in the game and finishing with two shots in a 6-2 Marlies win over Frederik Gauthier and the Utica Comets.

Ritchie is one cog in the machine that is the Leafs trade deadline plans. Jonas Siegel wrote an article noting several potential additions at defense. He noted Ben Chiarot would be a bad fit. Despite saying that, lots of discourse (including from Pierre LeBrun) was encouraging Chiarot to the Leafs. Can we just be done with this? We all know they’re going to get Jocelyne Larocque anyway and we’ll have two months to complain about all the penalties she takes.

Going back to WoHo, reporting here indicates the Women’s U18 World Juniors will be rescheduled and hosted by the USA in June of this year.

One tidbit from Frank Seravalli is that Winnipeg Jets centre Mark Scheifele could be gone from the team before the start of next season. That relationship seems to have fallen apart.

And finally, Tim Leiweke is part of the Seattle group that wants to get a women’s pro hockey team (notice they don’t say run by which league) in the city in the new future. Seattle is currently home to the Seattle Kraken of the NHL and four-time champion Seattle Storm of the WNBA.

From The Branches