Penguins ready to host USA-Canada women’s game at PPG Paints Arena
Mike Matheson has appeared in the Stanley Cup playoffs and played in the World Championships.
Nothing compares, though, to the butterflies he has when watching his wife.
“I think the most nervous I have ever been in my life was when she was in the gold medal game in (PyeongChang, South Korea, for the 2018 Winter Olympics),” Matheson said, referring to wife, Emily Pfalzer Matheson.
“There’s something about caring about somebody involved in a sports event, especially, and having absolutely no control over it. I have been in big games myself and haven’t felt that nervous just because you are in the thick of it and you are reading, reacting and focused on doing that.”
A Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman, Matheson will on Saturday be watching Emily work at the rink. This time, Pfalzer Matheson won’t be playing for Team USA but will instead be serving as an assistant coach for the American women’s hockey national team. And though this time a gold medal won’t be on the line, any time the U.S. faces Canada in women’s hockey, plenty remains at stake.
Saturday’s 4 p.m. game at PPG Paints Arena is dubbed the “Rivalry Rematch,” and it will be the first meeting between the best American and Canadian women’s hockey players since the Feb. 17 gold-medal game at the Olympics in Beijing.
“The U.S.-Canada (women’s hockey) rivalry is like nothing else,” said Matheson, who is from Quebec but has played college and pro hockey in the U.S. “I don’t think there’s any other sport where there’s two teams that dominate every single tournament that they’re at, and you can pretty much flip a coin between the two of them as to who will win each game. So I think it’s great that the Pittsburgh fans will be able to see it in person.”
Whatever faint hope there was of the rest of the world closing the gap on the Canadian and U.S. women’s hockey teams is quickly being dashed just days into the Beijing Games. https://t.co/bcn3EJoIHR
— Tribune-ReviewSports (@TribSports) February 6, 2022
The rosters for Saturday’s game are said to be almost identical to those who met for the 3-2 Canada win last month. It was the sixth time in the seven Winter Olympics since women’s ice hockey was added that the U.S. and Canada met in the gold-medal game. The Canadians have won four of the six meetings. The two nations have combined to win all seven Olympic gold medals.
Throw in that the two nations that share the longest international border in the world (5,525 miles), and it’s easy to see why the rivalry is so tense.
“There’s some real charismatic players involved on both sides,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said, “and I think they do a terrific job in representing our sport and their respective teams in such a great way.”
Saturday’s game is hosted by the Penguins and the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association. It comes 2 ½ years after the Penguins hosted a joint training camp for the U.S. and Canadian teams at their UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex facility in Cranberry Township.
That weekend featured a pair of exhibition games. Although Saturday’s game, too, is also technically (to use a soccer term) just a “friendly,” the bigger venue combined with an Olympic gold-medal game that happened just 3 ½ weeks ago should translate into an entertaining atmosphere.
“I’m excited to see sort of that next level of freedom and creativity get unlocked with this game,” Team USA star forward Hilary Knight told the Penguins’ official website. “But then also, at the end of the day, it’s USA vs. Canada. You never know what’s going to happen, right? So it’s just a wonderful time.”
Team Canada’s Sarah Nurse led all players at the Olympics tournament with 18 points, including a goal in the gold-medal game.
“There’s a lot of pride still on the line,” Nurse said in the pittsburghpenguins.com story. “I think any time we get to play, there’s a lot of pride. It doesn’t matter if it’s an exhibition game, it doesn’t matter if it’s at the Olympics.
“So it’s going to be pretty fast-paced hockey, it’s going to be good hockey, and it’s going to be pretty physical, so we’ll have to be ready for that. But we’re very excited, and I think it’s going to be an awesome matchup.”
Chris Adamski is a TribLive reporter who has covered primarily the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2014 following two seasons on the Penn State football beat. A Western Pennsylvania native, he joined the Trib in 2012 after spending a decade covering Pittsburgh sports for other outlets. He can be reached at cadamski@triblive.com.
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