U.S. women strike gold with 2-0 win over Canada in U18 world hockey championship

The Under-18 women's world hockey championship gold medal game took place at Centre 200 in Sydney, N.S., on Jan. 18, 2026. (Ryan MacDonald/CTV Atlantic)

SYDNEY — Canada’s unbeaten run at the Under-18 women’s world hockey championship came to an end Sunday.

Unfortunately, the impressive streak was halted in the gold-medal game against the United States.

Emily Pohl and Lindsay Stepnowski scored for the Americans and Talla Hansen chipped in with two assists as the U.S. won gold with a 2-0 win. It was the Americans’ 10th gold medal in the U-18 event and became the first team to go undefeated and never trail in a game.

It’s the eighth silver medal for Canada at the event.

Netminder Bianca Birrittieri of Flower Mound, Texas, named player of the game, stopped 38 shots to record the shutout. Lea-Rose Charrois stopped 25 shots in the Canadian net.

Jane Daley of Medfield, Mass., was named the tournament’s MVP, finishing with a tournament-record 12 goals.

“Our players have been training and buying in every day, all the time,” said U.S. coach Courtney Kennedy. “Watching them choose time and time again to play the right way, it melts your heart. You want them to get that (gold medal), they dream of it. I’ll be thinking about that for a while.”

Pohl gave the U.S. a 1-0 lead at 14:08 of the first period, and Stepnowski doubled the lead at 18:17 of the second.

Czechia beat Sweden 4-3 in Sunday’s bronze-medal final.

“We battled right to the end. We played a full 60 minutes and that is all that we could have asked for,” said Kendall Doiron, who was named Canada’s player of the game. ”Even though the results were not in our favour, I think our group did well and I am super proud of them.

“I learned a lot as a person and as a player. Even with a silver medal, I feel like I learned a lot more this week than what is around my neck.”

Canadian coach Vicky Sunohara said her team had chances but couldn’t bury the puck or beat Birrittieri.

“I think that if we got one in, it could have changed the momentum, but we gave it everything we had,” said Sunohara. “(The United States) is a really good team and they worked hard for a full 60 minutes. I cannot take anything away from them. Hopefully this young group will all learn from this, but it is pretty tough right now.”

Canada went 3-0 in Group A’s preliminary round, beating Switzerland 9-0, Hungary 14-0 and Sweden 9-2. Canada then beat Finland 12-0 in the quarterfinals and knocked off Czechia 8-1 in the semifinals.

Canada finished the event with 52 goals for, which is a single tournament team record.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 18, 2026.