Still Country For Old Women

Megan Keller was a 21-year-old next-big-thing-on-defense when she won her first Olympic gold medal, in Pyeongchang, the winter before her senior year of college. She was also very nearly the reason her team lost it. The refs whistled her for an illegal hit on Canadian captain Marie-Philip Poulin late in overtime, and her teammates spent 95 chilling seconds on the penalty kill atoning for her sins. With the hindsight of a gold medal, Keller’s veteran teammates could be gracious about this. “She didn’t make a mistake,” Hilary Knight said afterward. “I didn’t agree with the call. She made some big plays, some big plays to keep the puck in. … She has this medal in her pocket and I hope she goes and gets four more.”

That game foreshadowed the minutes-eating defender Keller would become for the national team and eventually in the PWHL. (She played just shy of 30 minutes in the Boston Fleet’s last regulation game before the Olympic break.) But even as she led her team in ice time in Pyeongchang, she had to enjoy the gold medal win at a distance. The 25 unserved seconds of her minor penalty meant Keller was ineligible for the shootout and would need to stay in the box for the rest of the game. Incredibly, the same sequence transpired at the women’s world championships the following year, in a nervy (and scandalous) gold-medal game between the U.S. and Finland. Keller took a slashing penalty with a little under two minutes left in overtime. When Alex Cavallini made the “golden save” in the Finland shootout, Keller skated into the celebration from the other side of the rink. You could say she was due. This time, the celebration skated into her.