Perhaps a third team of golden girls in less than two days was too much for Canada to ask.

It sure seemed that way.

After Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse started it on Wednesday and Jennifer Jones and her Manitoba rink continued Thursday in Sochi, the Canadian national women’s looked like they wouldn’t be able to finish the hat trick in the gold medal game against their hated rivals from United States.

After 56 minutes, Team Canada truly looked dead in the water.

And yet, this band of extraordinary women, dominated most of the year by the Americans, somehow pulled it off in style with a come-from-behind 3-2 overtime triumph, perhaps delivering what will come to be regarded as the most sensational Olympic hockey victory ever for Canada by a men’s or women’s team.

Marie-Phillipe Poulin tied the game with 55 seconds left in regulation, then won it with a power play goal at 8:10 of overtime to end an absolutely wild game.

“It’s the best feeling ever,” said Poulin. “It’s like a dream come true. Now we know what we worked all year for.”

Poulin had scored twice four years earlier in Vancouver when Canada had beaten the U.S. for the gold, and came through again for head coach Kevin Dineen, who only took over the Canadian women’s team o n Dec. 17 after he’d been fired by the NHL Florida Panthers and Dan Church had quit as the national team’s coach.

Poulin’s heroics were part of an unpredictable series of events in the crucial minutes. Just before she tied the game in the third, Canada had pulled goalie Shannon Szabados for an extra attacker. A linesman accidentally interfered with Catherine Ward, and the U.S. took a shot at the abandoned Canadian net.

And hit the left post.

Moments later, Poulin took a pass from Rebecca Johnston and beat Jesse Vetter in the U.S. to create overtime.

In OT, Szabados made a series of spectacular saves, and then Ward was penalized for cross-checking. Six seconds into the U.S. power play, however, the Americans were penalized for slashing the pads of Szabados, a decidedly weak call.

Just over a minute after that, 35-year-old Hayley Wickenheiser took off on a clear breakaway with the two teams playing with three skaters aside, and was tripped up from behind by American forward Hilary Knight.

Incredibly, the British referee did not call a penalty shot, but instead penalized Knight for cross-checking, off all things.

That was the opening Canada needed. After working the puck around, Poulin got the puck to the left of the U.S. net, and with Vetter too exhausted to cross the crease one last time, found the open net for the historic Canadian triumph.

Wickenheiser, almost certainly in her last Olympics after her storied career , won her fourth Olympic gold medal along with Caroline Ouellette and Jayna Hefford.

Canada had won gold over the Americans at the last three Olympics, but this time the younger, faster U.S. squad built a taut 2-0 lead in the latest clash between the world’s two best female hockey nations.

Too many penalties by the defending gold medallists and a crucial 5-on-3 Canadian power play in the second period that didn’t produce a goal looked to have Canada on the edge of defeat. The Americans defended tenaciously, but with 3:26 left in the third, Brianne Jenner roared down the left wing and bounced a shot off the knee of an American defenceman and past Vetter to key the Canadian comeback.

After Poulin tied it, the Americans had at least five good chances to win the game. But the bad slashing call ended their 4-on-3 power play, and then Canada capitalized when given the same chance.

Nobody, ladies and gentlemen, will be talking about kicking women’s hockey out of the Olympics again. Not after this. Not after a fabulous gold medal game followed an almost equally excited bronze medal triumph by Switzerland over Sweden.

This game has growing to do. But it made history – again – today.