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Vicky Sunohara has felt the pain of Canada's women

It rolls around just once every four years but, despite showing signs, the world doesn’t stop when Canada and United States meet in the Gold Medal Final at the Olympics.

To wit, three-time Canadian Olympic medalist Vicky Sunohara, an icon of the women’s game, was two hours from the comforts of home in London, Ontario, coaching a hockey game of her own at the USports level with the University of Toronto.

Still, Sunohara wasn’t about to miss out on the next generation of Canadian hockey talent aim to extend the run of Olympic dominance that she helped establish back in 2002 in Salt Lake, and extend again four years later in Turin. So she skipped the bus ride home with the players and took to downtown London with a friend, watching late into the night until the chosen establishment eventually shut down the lights.

It made for an early morning, and weary eyes in preparation of Game 2 versus Western.

Not like there was another option.

Vicky Sunohara has felt the Canadian women’s pain. (Getty)
Vicky Sunohara has felt the Canadian women’s pain. (Getty)

Like most Canadians, Sunohara was disappointed with the result. If not for the gold medals being draped around the necks of the Americans, because the game was decided in a shootout.

“I would like to see that changed. It’s too important,” Sonohara says, her frustration underscored by the fact that she was behind the bench as two university schools played beyond a single overtime on the same night.

“You want to see the game decided by an actual hockey play.”

Though never experiencing that sort of loss, Sunohara has a strong grasp of the pain those 23 Canadians and their families felt into the Korean night and beyond.

She was a member of the last Canadian national team to lose to the United States in Olympic competition, 20 years ago in Nagano. She says it still bothers her to this day that one of her three Olympic medals is coloured silver, as opposed to uniformly gold.

“There’s nothing comforting about it, bringing back a silver for Canada.”

But the lessons she took from that loss, which Sunohara is still reminded of more than 10 years after her retirement – and her since transition to mother and coach – was what brought the best out of a national team that dominated the next two decades that followed.

She expects that will be the case for the next wave of talent that just tasted defeat in their first Olympic experiences.

“Standing on the blue line, listening to the American anthem,” she says. “(That drive) starts there. For that team, it started at the end of the game… there are nine players there without an Olympic gold. I’m sure they are thinking about it already.”

Looking at the entire body of work through two games in PyeongChang, it’s difficult to argue that the United States didn’t deserve the gold.

It isn’t, however, reason to assert that the next few decades will belong to the Americans, as it did previously for Canada.

The foundation of both programs are buoyed by incredible talent constantly pushing the veterans guards. It’s the reason we should see these two teams combine to create another can’t-miss moment four years down the road in Beijing.

Somewhere, you can be sure, Sunohara will be watching.

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