When they eventually install microcameras into the corneas of our eyes, we’ll still be watching this hockey highlight.
This was Kerri Strug vaulting on one leg in 1996. Bob Beamon shattering the long jump in Mexico City in 1968. Sid the Kid in 2010, only much, much cooler.
It was more than historic. It was iconic.
In overtime of the gold-medal game at the 2026 Winter Olympics, Team USA defenseman Megan Keller deked Canadian defender Claire Thompson and left her in the dust, flailing with her stick.
Keller then beat goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens with a backhand to the short side.
It was a golden goal worthy of the name.
It should live as one of the great Olympic moments of all time. It should live as one of the great sporting moments of all time.
It’s hard to compare this Olympic moment with Romania’s Nadia Comăneci, who scored gymnastics’ first perfect 10 in 1976 at the age of 14. It’s not really the same as Usain “Lightning” Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter who broke Michael Johnson’s world record in the 200 meters in 2008 or Michael Phelps, who, at those same Beijing Games, swam his way to eight golds; their moments were parts of aggregations. And it certainly lacks the social significance of Black sprinter Jesse Owens, who won a then-record four golds in 1936 in front of host Adolf Hitler.
I was there for Bolt and Phelps. All of those moments took your breath away the way only great moments in sport leave you breathless.
None was quite as magical as Keller’s golden goal.
Sidney Crosby did something similar for Canada in 2010, and he did it against Team USA, and I was there for that, too. But Crosby’s goal was simpler: He carried the puck in, had a weak shot deflected away, got it back, went to the boards, passed to teammate Jarome Iginla, skated away from suddenly inattentive defenseman Brian Rafalski, got the pass back from Iginla, and snapped a shot past goaltender Ryan Miller.
Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and film legend Donald Sutherland, both great Canadians, were sitting right behind me. They’d probably disagree with my assertion here.
Sid’s was a great play.
Keller’s was better.
Keller’s goal isn’t quite the same event as Team USA’s upset of the Soviets in 1980. That was a true underdog story, mostly U.S. college kids playing an elite set of professionals who’d won the last four golds. It might be the biggest upset in sports history — but it wasn’t an overtime game, or even a gold-medal game, and there was no defining, game-ending moment like Keller’s.
Pity poor Thompson, but not too much. She’d been a hero in China with 11 assists and two goals, an Olympic record for defensemen, when the Canadians won the gold in 2022.
There are plenty of caveats surrounding what should be the play of the year. None of them of Keller’s making.
Crosby scored his goal in a four-on-four setting, but overtime rules were changed ahead of the 2022 Olympics to make it three-on-three.
The teams in 2010 were more evenly matched, while the U.S. team in Milan, Italy, was heavily favored, having outscored opponents, 31-1, in a 6-0 run that included a 5-0 win over Canada in the preliminary round. However, Canada’s strategy and execution Thursday had the reigning champs holding onto a 1-0 lead before American captain Hilary Knight tied the game with 2 minutes, 4 seconds left in regulation.
Finally, no teams besides Canada (five) and the U.S. (three) have won a gold medal, and they have met in the gold-medal game seven of the eight times it has been played. To date, it is not a sport in which the field offers the titans much resistance.
This should not diminish the moment. Keller and her teammates can only beat opponents they meet.
This golden goal is one of the best plays you will ever see.
In fact, as a spontaneous athletic maneuver of incomparable audacity and breathtaking skill, seizing the biggest moment in a player’s life, I struggle to find its equal.
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