GANGNEUNG, South Korea _ For much of two decades this is the day reserved for a celebration of North American women's ice hockey.
The Olympic gold-medal game has become a quadrennial destination for women athletes who know each other like sisters.
Canada and the United States have met in every Winter Games' final except in 2006 when the Americans had a terrible misstep against Sweden in the semifinals.
The countries have faced off in all 20 world championship finals with the United States winning the last four.
Separated by a long border, colors and little else, the United States had another draining encounter that went to a penalty shootout Thursday against Canada, the four-time reigning Olympic champion. Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson scored in the sixth round of the shootout and Maddie Rooney stopped four of Canada's six attempts, including the final one, for a 3-2 U.S. triumph.
"You've got the most beautiful rivalry in sport," said Hilary Knight.
Is it friendly?
"No."
Although the women have been college teammates and often work together to promote women's sports, the feelings are raw when representing their countries.
"Winning would be huge," said Knight, who scored Thursday with 25.4 seconds left in the first period. Her country "wants to be No. 1 in everything and we have all been raised as awesome competitors so at the end of the day we want to win."
These teams are so dominant that the United States and Canada outscored opponents by 27-2 combined heading into the gold-medal showdown.
They play each other as much as possible before their Olympic appointment because no other teams challenge them like they do each other. The countries met five times in the fall with Canada winning three times.
This intensity has nothing to do with Trump vs. Trudeau. The country's leaders weren't on the political radar on a wet day in 1998 in Nagano, Japan, when the pathos of this rivalry took hold.
Canada had the world's most experienced team, the national passion but lost to its rivals 7-4 in a meaningless round-robin game.
Then came the final where U.S. goalkeeper Sarah Tueting stymied Canada's attack. The American women won a 3-1 stunner in an Olympic final debut that would be a precursor to the wildly popular 1999 women's soccer World Cup.
"I realized a gold medal was being hung around the neck of a female hockey player, and I couldn't believe the effect it had on me," Canadian coach Shannon Miller said at the time.
The first Olympic tournament featured two of the biggest names in the history of women's hockey _ Cammi Granato of the United States and Hayley Wickenheiser, who won four gold medals for Canada after the initial defeat. Their legacies have remained strong during these once-in-four-year Stanley Cup-like contests.
Knight, one of her sport's biggest names, pays tribute to Granato by wearing the former star's No. 21.
"I was jumping up and down on my couch 20 years ago cheering on Cammi Granato," she said.
"To be able to be here 20 years later is pretty incredible. It's part of our legacy."
Knight, who also has a Granato-signed hockey stick, played in her third Olympic finale Thursday. She and those from the 2014 team wanted nothing more than a memory-changing victory after what happened at the Sochi Games.
Canada tied the score in the final minute and went on to win 3-2 in overtime.
Like Thursday's bruising battle, it was another piece of the larger mosaic that started 20 years ago.
The women left Nagano feeling they had created a foundation that would promote hockey _ and all sports _ for young women who had felt left on the sideline for decades.
"The 1998 team was the role model in this process," goalkeeper Rooney said. "It's huge for the youth in general."
But as the 1999 soccer team would soon discover, drama-filled moments often fade without tangible advances. Women's hockey remained a niche sport for years before its latter-day growth in colleges and the creation of the Canadian Women's Hockey League in 2007 and the more recent National Women's Hockey League.
Those who played in the '98 final will consider that something of a triumphant in itself.
