Team Canada’s Captain Clutch, Marie-Philip Poulin, has won 3 Olympic gold medals and she has scored the game-winning goal in each of those games!!!

If that’s not clutch, I’m not sure what is. Her ability to deal with tremendous pressure, step up in the biggest moments and score ALL the big goals is what makes her one of the greatest (if not the greatest) players ever in the female game.

Click on the link below to watch the gold-medal-winning goal again and to see a slow-motion breakdown of the entire play highlighting 4 key moments that make the goal possible:

There are 4 things that really jump out skill-wise about this goal:

1) The Flip By The D: If you watched the game on TV, you would have heard the announcers highlighting the effectiveness of the flip pass by Ambrose to relieve pressure and spring her teammates into the attack. Learning how to flip the puck up in the air is a skill that can be taught and learned at young ages and is useful for both relieving pressure (as used by Ambrose) or to score goals in tight when trying to get it up and over the goalie.

2) The Speed Up The Ice: When Nurse first retrieves the flip pass from Ambrose, her teammates are 3 or 4 strides behind her. Jenner and Poulin sprint up the ice (40+ seconds into their shift) to catch up and Nurse makes a great read to stop up at the face-off dot to allow her teammates to get in the play and create an odd-man advantage for her team. If Jenner and Poulin don’t catch up quickly, Nurse probably ends up carrying the puck in deep, which means no scoring chance and definitely no gold-medal-winning goal on this play.

3) The First Shot: It is worth noting how Jenner sets up the gold-medal-winning goal on this play. She is ‘puck ready’ as she enters the zone which means she has her stick and body in a position where she can get her shot off quickly. The super quick release of her shot challenges the USA goalie to make a tough save which causes her to kick out a hard rebound out in Poulin’s direction and ultimately leads to the goal.

4) The Second/Gold Medal Winning Shot: Poulin’s ability to make magic off that hard rebound is the most world-class part of this play. I had to watch the replay 20+ times before I even realized what she did here. Not only is she sprinting up ice full speed at the 40+ second mark of her shift, but she’s got to corral a laser beam of a shot rebound off the pad of the USA goaltender. This is no ordinary tap in to finish the play. If you watch the slow-motion replay closely, you can see that Poulin kicks the puck with one foot (under her other foot) to her stick and then shoots it off the goalie’s pad so that it directs into the net. It all happens so quickly that it is almost impossible to see in real-time. MPP makes it look easy but I’m not sure that there is another hockey player in the world who can make that play in that moment on that stage.

What a goal. What a moment.

What a gold medal performance by Captain Clutch.