The skill gap between teams is closing in women’s hockey at the Olympics

It’s too early to say we’re past the days of women’s hockey blowouts at the Winter Olympics, but there’s no disputing that the games have gotten closer and closer over the years.

Milano-Cortina 2026 marks the eighth women’s hockey tournament at the Olympics, and it’s been the closest one to date. Even with relatively untested groups from Italy and France competing, there hasn’t been a single game decided by more than five goals. It certainly hasn’t just been Team USA and Canada against the world.

Two-time World Champion and 2010 Olympic gold medallist Tessa Bonhomme has seen the women’s hockey landscape evolve over more than a decade of playing at the highest level and another decade as a broadcaster. She appeared on Friday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live with Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton to discuss the emerging new powers in the women’s game, as well as the impact of the PWHL in levelling the playing field.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Just looking at some surface-level numbers, comparing this Olympics to ones in the past — Canada, so far, if you take out the 5-0 loss to Team USA, they’re, I think it’s a plus-13 goal differential through their other three preliminary round games. Back in 2018, Canada finished the preliminary round at plus-28 through those four games. So, from a parity perspective, when you look at these other countries … have they lived up to the hype, or what we expected? Like, everyone kind of thought that this would be one of the tighter Olympics that we’ve seen in past years, so have those other countries lived up to that expectation?

Tessa Bonhomme: Yeah, I think the development group’s really coming through, because a lot of the teams that are pushing [Canada and USA] have a younger group on their side. So, I think these NSOs, these National Sporting Organizations, are actually dumping money into their development program, the under-18 worlds and all that. And everybody’s going to say, ‘Oh, Canada and the USA are still beating people 5-0,’ well, it used to be 13 or 14-0. So, yes, the gap is closing. Are we saying it’s closed yet? No. But it used to be: USA, Canada, and then Finland … maybe Sweden? And then it turned into, instead of Sweden, maybe Czechia? But that gap between Canada and the USA and them was still a bit too far. Now, you’ve got Finland, Czechia, Sweden. Germany’s still trying to knock on the door. But now you’ve got more than three teams that are really close and tight. And Switzerland, even — Switzerland held USA to 2-0 for the majority of their game. That’s wild.

So, yeah, the gap is closing, it’s just a matter of holding on. And the PWHL, similar to the NHL … it used to be blowouts on the men’s side until a lot of the European players came over and started playing in the NHL, and it didn’t happen overnight. The PWHL’s only been around for two years, right? We just started our third season. So, let this play out for another five to seven, and one, perhaps two Olympics from now, just watch how tight it’s gonna be. It’s awesome.

Watch the full episode here: