PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA—It took Natalie Spooner time before she believed it, before it felt real. A few months, she thinks. She would hear people tell her they were in a hospital oncology ward and they turned the gold-medal game on; that they were on a Caribbean island, watching the game in a thatch-roofed bar. But she couldn’t wrap her mind about it. Canada 3, USA 2, Sochi, 2014. It was real-life legend.

“It’s pretty cool to know that literally all of Canada tuned in to watch that game, and their lives stopped, because of hockey,” says Spooner, a longtime member of Canada’s women’s hockey team.

Four years later, and everything has built back up to another pinnacle. The sport is improving. More countries are better. But it is the United States and Canada, again, forever locked at the peak.

“I mean, it’s the biggest stage,” said Canadian forward Brianne Jenner, after Canada smashed the Olympic Athletes from Russia 5-0, despite a slow start, after the U.S. crushed Finland by the same score. “It is our Stanley Cup, it’s what we dream about since we were little girls. So we’re going to enjoy that experience when it comes, but once that puck’s dropped, you’ve trained so much that your body just knows what to do.

“I think you often want to say that it comes down to who wants it more. There’s no question that these two teams want it as bad as possible. So it’s going to come down to who executes, who’s able to perform in the moment, and who stays disciplined. And probably who wins the special-teams battle.”

Everybody remembers 2014. The 2-0 lead that Canada overcame in the final four minutes, off a lucky bounce and a quick-thinking shot, and a puck that hit the post of an empty Canadian net. And then the overtime power-play winner from Marie-Philip Poulin, then just 22. Canada’s fourth straight Olympic gold was a miracle. As Jenner puts it, “I hope it doesn’t go quite like that. My mom’ll have a heart attack.”

They will try again. The women’s game has other signposts — world championships, which the U.S. has won every year since 2013, twice in overtime; the Four Nations Cup, which the U.S. has won every year since 2015, once in overtime.

But everything they do between Games, everything, is geared toward this. For Canada, it is a chance to live up to the standards set by the women who came before them. Spooner still remembers being at a Peterborough hockey camp at age 11 with Tara Watchorn, and they saw Jennifer Botterill and her gold medal from the 2002 Games. Both Spooner and Watchorn played in 2014.

“It’s definitely a lot of pressure, but it’s exciting at the same time for women’s hockey, and girls in sports,” said Spooner. “Hopefully there’s a lot of girls watching and dreaming of being in this spot, because I remember watching and dreaming of being here.”

They’re not the only dreamers. For the Americans, it is a chance to repair whatever was broken in 2014. That was their game, and they lost. Ask any American player what it would mean to win gold, and the answer is clear.

“I don’t think words do it justice,” says winger Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson, who was on that Sochi team. “It would mean everything.”

“I mean, that’s always been our dream, and to follow up the (gold medal-winning) 1998 Olympic team, they’ve been our leaders, great role models for us,” says goaltender Maddie Rooney, a 21-year-old national team rookie. “It would mean everything for us. To win this as a team would mean everything.”

“Everything,” says Amanda Kessel, who was in Sochi too. “Life, our teammates, family, country. There’s no greater honour for us. We’ve been working our whole life.”

“The final and the heartbreak is definitely part of it,” said longtime winger Hilary Knight, in her third Games. “It’s like having a bad relationship go sour. That’s what it is, right? It’s always going to be there, it’s a part of your fabric. But at the same time, it motivated me tremendously. I was out watching the U-18s play . . . and I was motivated by how they were moving the puck. And the jerseys were just flowing in the wind.”

“It’s crazy where women’s hockey is going. It’s outstanding to look back and go, 2010, we were there. 2014? We were here. And now, 2018. It’s great to see the calibre rising.”

The Americans were the better team in the round-robin game that Canada won. Finnish goaltender Noora Raty said, “It’s tough. Canada plays so well as a team; they’re prepared, their system’s really good. U.S. is more individual skills. I think it’s going to come down to goaltending, honestly.” Of the United States, she says, “I think they’re the most skilled in the world.”

Maybe the Americans deserve to win. They talk with confidence after pushing Canada around in the round robin. But they should have won in 2014, and they didn’t. It was the purest heartbreak: four years of seeing that puck hitting a leg, that puck hitting a post.

“I think the losses have taught me a lot about who I am as a person, who we are as a team,” said Knight. “And I keep sort of pinching myself. I mean, this is my third time going to a gold-medal game. It’s a lot of our third times. That’s a huge opportunity, to represent our country the way that we have, I really hope that we get a tangible success at the end of this journey.

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“Sometimes the puck isn’t going to bounce your way, and obviously you need to get back up and keep chomping at it if you’re still hungry for it. I think the biggest thing is, I didn’t know how much I loved the game until that point in time. I mean, I obviously love ice hockey, but it wasn’t until months after that I realized how much I love it. And to really suffer that downfall on such a big stage, with all the energy and the eyes of the country are on you, is huge.

“But at the same time you’ve got to get back up, dust yourself off, and go on.”

The United States is here. Canada is here. It’s where they should be. This is where everything else falls away and they play for themselves, for their teammates. They will play for the countries, and for the ones who came before and will come after. They will play for history, and hope it doesn’t break their hearts.