Who can break the North American hold in Milano Cortina 2026?<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything can happen in women\u2019s hockey,\u201d says Swiss forward Alina M\u00fcller<\/a>, a player intimately familiar with this mindset. At Sochi 2014<\/a>, at the age of 15, M\u00fcller scored the game-winning goal in the bronze-medal match, becoming the youngest player ever to win an Olympic medal in women\u2019s ice hockey.<\/p>\n Now, looking across her two Olympic cycles, she believes the challengers are no longer on the fringes. Finland and Czechia, she says, have made decisive steps forward in international tournaments, particularly in matching the physicality and pace of their North American counterparts.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have very, very strong players who can keep up with the athleticism that the U.S. and Canada have,\u201d M\u00fcller explains. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen it before. They\u2019ve given them a tough time. The gap is getting closer.\u201d<\/p>\n M\u00fcller also reveals a potential point of weakness. Dominant teams, she notes, are used to controlling the puck, scoring early, and playing from ahead. In tight games, that comfort can quickly disappear. \u201cIf you can defend well, stick to a system, and somehow make them change their style because they\u2019re not five goals ahead, that\u2019s when they can get nervous,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Czechia have made an identity out of creating such discomfort.\u00a0<\/p>\n Physical, fearless, and increasingly talented, the young Czech team relishes making life difficult for its opponents. Rising forward and PWHL\u2019s 2025 No. 1 draft pick, Krist\u00fdna Kaltounkov\u00e1, sums it up:<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re a tough bunch,\u201d the Czech player says. \u201cA lot of us love to play physical. Then we have smaller players who are fast and creative, and it all works together. We put up a fight, we play with our hearts, we make it hard for the other team and we battle until the last second.\u201d That edge is sometimes met with a penalty or two, but it is a risk they are willing to take to disorient their opponents.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The tactic was evident at the most recent World Championships, where host nation Czechia pushed the United States to the limit in a tense 2\u20131 semi-final loss that exposed just how small the margins have become at the top of the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who can break the North American hold in Milano Cortina 2026? \u201cAnything can happen in women\u2019s hockey,\u201d says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-237905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}