Canadian women’s hockey team rolls with delay at Olympic Games

MILAN – The Canadian women’s hockey team shrugged off a delay to the start of its Olympic women’s hockey tournament and geared up for a different first opponent.

Canada was supposed to open defence of its gold medal Thursday against Finland, but that game was postponed to Feb. 12 due to multiple cases of norovirus among the Finns. 

The Swiss women skipped the opening ceremonies after one team member was isolated with the virus, but Canada’s game against Switzerland on Saturday night at Milano Rho Ice Hockey Arena had the green light to proceed.

“There was no fear it would be cancelled or postponed because we knew it was very contained,” said Canadian assistant captain Blayre Turnbull.

Finland was to also play its first game of the tournament earlier Saturday against the United States.

The Swiss opened with a 4-3 shootout win over Czechia on Friday.

The Canadian women were informed Thursday at noon that day they would not play Finland that night. 

Instead, they held a late skate at Milano Rho to mimic their late start times in the preliminary round. Only general manager Gina Kingsbury spoke to media that night.

Turnbull, goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens and Olympic rookie Jenn Gardiner gave interviews Saturday afternoon at a downtown hotel before their scheduled puck drop at 9:10 p.m. local time.

“We definitely had some conversations about, if this was to happen to any group, it would be us because we’re ready to handle it,” Turnbull said. 

“We have the staff and players who can get through adversity like this. Even calling it adversity is a little bit funny because our game just got postponed. It’s seriously not a big deal at all.

“In hindsight, it sucks that our game was postponed and that Finland was sick, but getting the chance to practice at that hour, I know it helped me, and I think a lot of other players feel the same way.”

Canada was originally scheduled to have three days off before its quarterfinal on Feb. 14, after finishing the preliminary round against archrival United States on Tuesday.

That break has shrunk with the rescheduling, which didn’t concern Desbiens.

“I don’t think it changes anything. Maybe one less practice, I guess,” she said. “Instead, we’ll be playing closer to quarterfinals, so that’s pretty exciting that way. 

“I guess some of the previous tournaments were a little tighter in time too, so we don’t have those three days off in the past. I guess we’re going back to the old schedule we used to have a few years ago.”

Canada returned 16 players from the 2022 edition that won gold in Beijing, which operated as a “closed loop” with masking and constant masking because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A game against Russia in Beijing was delayed over an hour because of late test results. Players from both teams wore KN95 masks during the game — Russia for two periods and Canada to the buzzer.

“You look around the roster and look at everybody’s stories and just the amount of experience and events people have been through, and I think this is just another step along the way,” Gardiner said. 

“The girls who were at the COVID Olympics as well have seen many things like this before and were maybe having a bit of a throwback to that, but for me, as a rookie, it’s new.

“You look at our leader, Marie-Philip Poulin, she’s the way she is because she shows up every single day at her best, no matter what. Not letting something like this get in the way of that and just moving forward with what we do have is going to be really important for us.”

 This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 7, 2026.

Note to readers:This is a corrected story. A previous version had the wrong day for Canada’s game against Switzerland