SOCHI, RUSSIA—Hayley Wickenheiser opened these Games as Canada’s flag-bearer. And on Thursday, before the historic drama broke loose at Bolshoy Ice Dome, she was granted another major honour.

The woman who’s been the name and the face of women’s hockey since before women’s hockey became an Olympic sport in 1998, was elected by fellow athletes to the International Olympic Committee’s athletes’ commission. It’s a post typically granted only to those who’ve displayed the passion and the commitment to fight for what matters to world-class sportsfolk. It looked like something the 35-year-old could do very effectively in retirement.

Let’s not rewrite what we saw before the script flipped and the floor fell out from under the Americans on Thursday night. For a lot of the gold-medal blood feud between Canada and the United States, it looked as though all that pre-Olympic talk about Canada’s women’s hockey roster being too old and too slow was dead on.

The U.S. appeared faster and surer and more determined for much of the game. By the time the U.S. made it 2-0 with about 18 minutes remaining in regulation, there were long faces among Canadian fans. And there were eulogies being crafted for an era interrupted.

What of Canada’s 19-game win streak in Olympic competition? It looked as though the red and white was about to suffer its first five-ringed loss since Nagano in 1998. And how about Canada’s streak of three straight Olympic gold medals in women’s hockey? Silver was in the offing, and nobody was thrilled with the prospect, which is not to say they were resigned to it.

When the script flipped, unpredictably and gloriously, opportunity was seized. Twenty-two-year-old Canadian Brianne Jenner, like the rest of her teammates, was brought up to believe the game was never over. Jenner’s goal, banked off a defender’s leg, came with 3:26 remaining. And with it came both hope and a deficit cut to 2-1.

Twenty-two-year-old Marie-Philip Poulin has been taught, as a member of Team Canada since 2009, that the best players rise to the occasion in big moments. Four years ago, on the same ice that saw Sidney Crosby score his golden goal, Poulin scored the only two goals of the gold-medal win over the U.S.

So perhaps it was no surprise that on Thursday, when Canada’s prospects looked grim, Poulin delivered yet again. On the same national soil that saw Paul Henderson score his generational goal, Poulin scored two more of hers. First she scored the goal with 55 seconds remaining in regulation that tied it at 2-2. Then, with Canada on a 4-on-3 power play in a thrilling overtime, Poulin jammed in the puck that gave Canada a golden victory for the ages.

“There’s something there with Pooh,” said Kevin Dineen, the Canada coach, speaking of Poulin. “She doesn’t speak a lot but I always kind of catch her eyes. And there’s something in her eyes that spells big-game player. She showed that in Vancouver ... and she put a major stamp on that today.”

Said Jayna Hefford, 36, who scored a gold-medal winner in 2002 and often plays on a line with Poulin: “Marie-Philip Poulin is the best player in women’s hockey, hands down. To have her on your team, you know she’s going to come through in the big moment.”

Women’s hockey came up in the big moment on Thursday night, delivering unexpected extremes of emotion in an out-of-nowhere classic.

“It’s an amazing moment. I think we all know it was a team effort tonight,” said Poulin. “We never gave up. I’m so happy we brought it back. It was a great journey.”

It was a journey, if you measure it only over the past couple of months, characterized by internal turmoil and a shocking pre-Olympic coaching change, Kevin Dineen replacing the resigned Dan Church just a couple of months before Sochi. It was a journey, if you’re counting just the gold-medal game, characterized by bizarre officiating peppered with one of the more fortuitous near-misses a sport can offer.

With Canada trailing 2-1 and with Canada goaltender Shannon Szabados on the bench for an extra attacker, U.S. forward Kelli Stack zinged a try on goal from just inside her own blue line. As it rumbled threateningly along the ice, there was an audible groan from Canadian supporters who assumed it was headed into the net. But the puck collided head-on with the post. There was still 1:24 to play in regulation. Canada made the most of it.

Their results coming into the tournament going back to December had looked grim. Canada lost all four of its final pre-Olympic exhibition games against the U.S., this as newly inserted coach Dineen was acclimatizing himself to the program, and nobody was spinning those losses as anything but harbingers for a changing of the sport’s power structure.

The eulogies of a golden era were in the process of being written on Thursday. A towering force of sport was crumbling with a whimper.

Hefford, for her part, said she grew tired of hearing how she and her team were too old, past due, yesterday’s team.

“It’s happened a few times, yeah,” she said. “I liked our experience (on Thursday). I liked our leadership. I don’t think you can underestimate that on a team. We had an incredible team effort tonight. The plan was to peak tonight ... We felt we were prepared.”

They played like it, too. After that puck hit that post and Canada retrieved it, magic occurred. Poulin tied the game at 2-2 with 54 seconds to play. And then, in an overtime period that saw its share of referee-driven chaos, Canada wound up with a 4-on-3 power play wherein Poulin, left unattended on the left doorstep, potted the winner.

The refereeing, let’s be honest and merciful, was atrocious and wholly forgivable for the neophyte in the spotlight. Leave it to the geniuses at hockey’s international governing body to scour the globe for an appropriate person to call a North American blood feud and settle on a gold-medal-game rookie from ... Great Britain.

A more experienced set of eyes — or maybe two sets, as in the men’s game — would surely have seen it differently. Such is hockey. Canada took its good luck and spun it into gold.

“It’s not easy. I think people look at (four gold medals) and think that you just show up,” said Wickenheiser. “But the time and effort and the hell that you go through to get here, it’s really rewarding. And it feels great. This was a very difficult year.

“This year had a lot of adversity. I think if you wanted, you could probably make a movie about this team, what we’ve been through this year. And we stuck to it. We believed in each other. Our schedule was incredibly difficult. We barnstormed across Canada.

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“The goal was to physically push this team to the max so that under the mental pressure we wouldn’t break. And that’s exactly what we did tonight — we had the edge in mental toughness.”

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