It is not the gold medal game, but it very well might be a preview of it.
Canada and the United States, the most potent teams in the Olympic women’s hockey tournament, will meet Tuesday afternoon in their first matchup of these Games. So far, the teams have steamrollered their opponents in Beijing, stoking the quadrennial question of whether the sport is any nearer to parity than it was when it got its Olympic start in 1998.
The stakes in Tuesday’s game are limited to seeding, since all Group A teams — Canada, Finland, a Russian squad, Switzerland and the United States — automatically advance to elimination play.