In the gold medal game on Thursday, the Canadian and American women's hockey teams finally found worthy opponents: each other. But in the end, one woman made the biggest difference. Canada's coach, Melody Davidson, had to choose between the young phenom Shannon Szabados and the veteran Olympian Kim St. Pierre as the starting goalie. She went with youth, and it turned out she made the right choice. Szabados was brilliant, stopping all 28 American shots and enabling Marie-Philip Poulin's two first-period goals to stand up and make Canada the Olympic champion. The 2-0 victory gave Canada its third straight Olympic gold medal. It also came after two consecutive losses to the Americans in major tournament finals, at the world championships in 2008 and 2009. 'At this level you see how deep the goaltending talent is,' U.S. defender Kerry Weiland said. 'You get a hot goaltender and it's hard to put it away.' Canada and the United States are so experienced and so skilled that they are, in the words of Rene Fasel, president of the International Ice Hockey Federation, on a 'different planet' compared with other women's teams. Both teams cruised through their preliminary games, racking up shutouts and double-digit victories. The teams' shooters got plenty of practice, but the goalies sometimes stood around for minutes on end, waiting for someone just to fire a puck at them. Even Sweden, which stunned the United States with a semifinal upset at the 2006 Turin Games, did not put up much of a fight here, losing by 9-1 in the semifinals to the Americans. But the final was a display of top-notch women's hockey, played before a loud sellout crowd at Canada Hockey Place that included Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The American goalie, Jessie Vetter, contributed some fine play of her own, denying Cherie Piper as she cut across the slot in the second period and stopping Haley Irwin on a third-period breakaway. She kept the United States in the game, finishing with 26 saves. But the Americans had trouble generating an attack against the Canadian checking. Bigger and stronger, the Canadian women kept riding them off the puck, and when they did get through, Szabados was there, time and again. She did a split while stopping a shot by Monique Lamoureux with a glove save. Later she gloved a shot with Jenny Potter standing right in front, pushing back when Potter fell on top of her. Twice in the third period she denied Lamoureux again, once with a glove save and again by closing her pads on a sharp deflection from 4 feet away. Poulin gave Canada a 1-0 lead at 13 minutes 55 seconds of the opening period when she one-timed a pass from Jennifer Botterill over Vetter's glove. A few minutes later, the teams were playing four skaters a side when the puck came loose off a draw to the left of Vetter, and Poulin was there again. Her quick wrist shot made the score 2-0 at 16:50. The Americans failed to take advantage of two two-player advantages, one in the first, the other in the second. In the third, they began pressing and pinching but still failed to generate much of an attack and kept getting caught with only one defender back. They were not able to pull Vetter with enough time to make any difference. 'We kept shooting the puck to the glove side,' the American defender Angela Ruggiero said. 'We should have thrown it low and hoped for rebounds.' Fighting back tears, she added: 'What hurts the most is how close this team is. It's such a unique team to play on. I felt that this was our year. We had such equal heart, passion and love of the game. We never lost that -- we just couldn't put the puck in the net.' During the medal ceremony, players from Finland, which won the bronze with a 3-2 overtime victory over Sweden earlier Thursday, smiled and blew kisses as they accepted their medals. The Americans fought back tears as they received their silver medals. The predominantly Canadian crowd joined the American fans in chanting 'U.S.A.! U.S.A.!' and the players waved back warmly at the salute. The Canadian players beamed happily as they got their gold medals. Poulin, whose goals provided the margin of victory, winked at the camera. 'O Canada' was played as the flags were raised. The Canadian women linked arms and sang along. To their right, the Americans also linked arms, in a show of respect. 'This rivalry will never end,' Szabados said. 'It will just keep going on and on.' 