Canada's women's hockey team has some 'soul-searching' to do at the Olympics

MILAN — Canada looking completely overmatched in women's hockey happens so rarely that a 5-0 blowout loss to the U.S. in the rivals' preliminary round matchup at the Olympics raised some alarm bells.

Experienced players made rookie mistakes, penalties exacerbated the problem and even the absence of injured captain Marie-Philip Poulin could not explain the extent of the lopsided result. With one game left in round-robin play against Finland on Thursday before the knockout round begins on Saturday, the defending champions are at a critical juncture.

“We probably got to do a little bit of soul-searching and make some little adjustments,” coach Troy Ryan said. “But you’ve got to play the game with confidence. You can’t be scared to make mistakes, and that’s how it looked at times.”

A lot of the credit goes to the Americans, led by blossoming 23-year-old defenseman Caroline Harvey, who has taken her game to another level in the tournament and is on a trajectory to be the best player in the world in the not-too-distant future.

Captain Hilary Knight also has her team churning along to the point that the crash-course rematch in the gold-medal game looks tilted in favor of the U.S.

The Canadians have some time to get their act together, but the immediate autopsy of getting shut out was not rosy. The U.S. outshot them 22-10 through two periods before letting off the gas a little in the third, past the point that the outcome had been determined.

“We had a lot of breakdowns in our game," veteran forward Blayre Turnbull said. “We would make one mistake that led to another mistake, and sometimes those things kind of compound and they’re hard to make up for.”

Even an aging team can learn some new tricks, and Turnbull thinks that is about relying on structure and being aggressive.

One big disadvantage Canada has now is mental, given how the initial game against the U.S. at a tournament sets a psychological tone. Take the opponent out of it, and one of the issues may be inside players' heads.

“It’s not that there’s not confidence, but we played like we didn’t have confidence with the puck,” Ryan said. “We rushed a lot of decisions. You just look at the amount of offsides we had, the amount of icings we had — it’s just uncharacteristic. It’s not just us.”

Brianne Jenner, who wore the “C” with Poulin out, brushed off any concern about she and her teammates not having belief in themselves.

“Sometimes games like that happen,” Jenner said. "It’s hard to put a finger on what it was, but I don’t think we’re lacking any confidence or confidence in each other.”

Whatever the diagnosis, Canada has time to figure it out. Ryan said Poulin's lower-body injury was not as bad as the medical staff initially feared, and there's optimism the 34-year-old center will be back at the Olympics, even if she is doubtful to face Finland.

This was supposed to be the end of the preliminary round, but the Finns had an outbreak of norovirus last week that decimated their roster and caused their game against Canada to get postponed. Ryan may prefer extra practice time, but the rescheduling could give his team an opportunity to get right before the tournament becomes a single-elimination gauntlet.

Changes could be in the offing.

“I’m not one to hesitate to juggle,” Ryan said. "I don’t mind juggling lines. ... There’s probably some little tweaks that we need to make, for sure.”

Watching from the crease, goaltender Ann-Renee Desbiens wondered if the entire team needed to be more physical. With players coming from the PWHL where more hitting is permitted, one of the tweaks may be balancing that area of the game to fit within stricter international parameters.

“This event, we still haven’t found that line of what’s allowed and what’s not allowed, what you can do, not do, what’s called, what’s not called,” Desbiens said. "It’s just trying to find it as soon as you can and then try to make it hard to play against.”

Canada against the U.S. did not look hard to play against, but one thing that players don't believe needs to change is a motivation to get better and move on from a humbling defeat.

“I think we’re as hungry as it gets," Jenner said. “We want to do everything we can to learn from this.”