What’s next for the Canadian women’s soccer and hockey teams? | CBC Sports

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Canada’s two highest-profile women’s national teams each played an important game last night, with mixed results. Here’s a recap of those and a look at what’s ahead for the Canadian women’s soccer and hockey teams:

Soccer: Is the labour dispute derailing Canada’s World Cup hopes?

The Canadian women’s tumultuous trip to the SheBelieves Cup ended in disappointment last night with a 3-0 loss to Japan near Dallas. Playing under protest amid a bitter labour dispute with Canada Soccer, the reigning Olympic champions still had an outside shot to win the four-team round-robin tournament when they took the field. But the world’s sixth-ranked team turned in a listless performance vs. No. 11 Japan, looking “emotionally, physically exhausted” and “very flat” in the words of coach Bev Priestman.

The result ended up not mattering after the top-ranked U.S. defeated No. 9 Brazil a few hours later to finish 3-0-0 and win the Cup for the fourth straight year. But, perhaps more importantly, the Canadians let slip a rare opportunity to sharpen themselves for this summer’s Women’s World Cup.

As the players have noted in their public campaign for parity with the men’s national team — which at the SheBelieves Cup included wearing t-shirts with the words “Enough is Enough” and turning their warmups inside-out to hide the Canada Soccer logo — the Canadian women are not afforded many opportunities to face quality opponents. Canada Soccer has not even scheduled them a home friendly ahead of the World Cup.

The SheBelieves Cup was a chance for Canada to test itself against three highly ranked, World Cup-bound teams. But, perhaps taxed by their labour fight, the team could muster only one focused performance, bouncing back from a drab 2-0 opening loss to the Americans to beat Brazil 2-0 before last night’s dispiriting defeat to Japan.

Only two windows for international duty remain on the women’s soccer calendar before the World Cup kicks off July 20 in Australia and New Zealand. The next one, in April, allows for two matches, but Priestman said Canada will schedule only one because her team needs more training time. Earlier this week, Canada Soccer announced that the women are slated to play fifth-ranked France in Le Mans on April 11. However, the players could be in a legal position to strike by then, and they’ve threatened to do so if there’s no deal with the federation.

If the team walks out on the April friendly, its next chance for a tuneup won’t come until right before the World Cup. Priestman said Canada Soccer is targeting two exhibitions in Australia during the last-minute July 10-19 window and has already agreed to one matchup with an unidentified opponent. But those games, happening so close to women’s soccer’s biggest event, would likely lack the intensity of a proper tuneup.

What the players are seeking from Canada Soccer is something like the historic equal-pay deal won by the U.S. women’s team from their federation last year. That took years of fighting, and the economic headwinds at times seemed too great for the American players to overcome, given the massive revenue disparities between the women’s and men’s World Cups. But they had one point in particular that could not be questioned: they simply performed better than the American men, winning back-to-back Women’s World Cups in 2015 and ’19 while their male counterparts floundered. The U.S. women were enduring champions, always delivering for their country on the biggest stage. Even their harshest critics had to respect that. In an unkind world, with millions of dollars at stake, it may have made the difference.

If the Canadian women miss their next chance to prepare for the World Cup, it will be with noble intentions. But the hazards of entering their sport’s marquee event at less than peak form are not lost on this proud and fierce group of competitors. “We’re going to continue the fight, obviously,” said captain Christine Sinclair after last week’s loss to the United States. “But I think what we saw tonight is we also have to focus on the soccer a little bit too.”

Hockey: Canada cements its supremacy over the U.S.

Last night in Laval, Que., the Canadian women’s hockey team completed an incredible comeback from down three games to none by crushing the United States 5-0 in the deciding seventh game of their Rivalry Series.

The Americans had taken the first three games of the cross-border exhibition series in November, earning a pair of one-goal wins in Kamloops, B.C., (one via shootout) before a 4-2 victory in Seattle. But Canada rebounded with back-to-back 3-2 victories near Las Vegas and in Los Angeles before, stunningly, blowing out the Americans by a combined score of 10-1 in Games 6 and 7 in Quebec.

Blayre Turnbull scored a pair last night and captain Marie-Philip Poulin potted one to overtake the States’ Hilary Knight as the series goals leader with five. Knight finished with a series-high eight points, followed by Poulin with six.

The Americans won’t have to wait long for a chance to exact revenge. The women’s world championship begins April 5 in Brampton, Ont., where it’s highly likely the U.S. and Canada will meet in the title game for the 21st time. The Canadians won the two most recent — in 2021 in Calgary and 2022 in Denmark — and also beat the Americans in the gold-medal game at last year’s Olympics. Throw in this remarkable Rivalry Series comeback victory, and it seems the war for women’s hockey supremacy has tilted back in Canada’s favour after a few years where it looked like the U.S. had taken control.