She crushed the dreams of American hockey fans everywhere in February, 2014. In the gold medal game of the Sochi Olympics, the United States had no answer for the best hockey player to come out of Canada. She netted the game’s winning goal in overtime that day.

One year later, Marie-Philip Poulin, the captain of Boston University’s 7^th-ranked women’s hockey team, stands poised at the point to do the same thing. On Senior Night, on her home ice, the Terriers have pushed No. 1 Boston College to the brink in overtime — two days after BC routed their cross-town rivals, 5-0. The revenge would be sweet.

Plus, BU is on the power play. The game plan? Get Poulin the puck. When they do, she winds up quickly and fires a wrist shot. And, just like that, it slides past BC goaltender Katie Burt, and finds the back of the net. She’s done it.

Except she hasn’t. The referee waves Poulin over.

He recalls her goal, and sends her teammate Kayla Tutino to the penalty box for goaltender interference. Poulin tries to reason with him; he shakes his head. The crowd screams in disbelief.

In a whirlwind moment, Poulin’s collegiate hockey career is summed up completely.

Brilliant. Fleeting. Heartbreaking.
At this very point in her hockey career, Poulin sits on the edge of purgatory.

In her last weeks as a college athlete, the 23-year-old will make a run for the one title that eludes her: an NCAA Championship. But after she graduates, she’ll enter a territory foreign to most male hockey players with her talent: the relative abyss of non-Olympic years.

Poulin won’t train with Team Canada consistently until the year before the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Until then, she’ll likely play in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL). But the CWHL can’t afford to support its athletes in the same way the NCAA — and certainly the NHL — can.

“During Olympic years, we’re on the ice every single day. In the CWHL, you only have team practice twice a week, you only have skills a couple times a week. I think it’s more challenging to stay at the top of your game,” says Rebecca Johnston, a Canadian Olympian who plays for the CWHL’s Calgary Inferno. “And the league doesn’t pay their players, so we usually have to work part time, too. It’s really tough to balance trying to make money with playing.”

That’s right — the only professional women’s hockey league does not pay its players.

So, Poulin is a gold medal-winning Canadian hockey hero, who will be forced to figure out how to support herself financially while training at the highest level.

But, at this moment in her life, Poulin is quietly resolute. In ways, she’s every bit the poised Olympian, but in others, she’s a typical college senior. She wears all BU athletic gear, her dirty-blonde hair pulled back and tucked under a red-and-white beanie with a pom-pom. She leans forward, her blue eyes bright, talking about graduating. She’s savoring every moment she has left in Boston, and realizes now she took college for granted when she was a freshman.

Suddenly, Tutino, her teammate, bursts in, realizes she walked in on an interview, and turns red.

“Don’t be so awk-ward, Tino,” Poulin chides in her French-Canadian accent, laughing.

After Tutino leaves, Poulin leans forward, clasps her fingers together — her hands are more delicate than you’d think, and she wears a few silver rings — and goes back to mulling over her future.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do — if I’ll go back to Canada. I want to coach, eventually. I’m debating,” Poulin says, then cracks a small smile. “But, hopefully, I’ll be playing hockey.”

But before Poulin ventures into uncharted water, she has five important games left to win.

Winning an NCAA title is Poulin’s final shot at glory until 2018.

Does she think her team can do it?

“Winning is going to take a lot of hard work,” she says simply. “I think we’re the underdog. I think it’s better to be that way.”

She’s right. However, while BU is the underdog to super-deep teams like BC, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Harvard, Poulin is a catalyst who could change any close game. Beyond her ability to score big goals in big moments, she has a special toughness, a certain grit.

“I think about her blocked shots more than her goals,” Boston University head coach Brian Derocher says. “Last year, she blocked a shot against Minnesota that would have torn the kneecap off of most people, or left them useless for the next month. That’s who that kid is.”

It’s no wonder, then, that this season, Poulin earned the title of Best Defensive Forward in her conference, Hockey East. Plus, on Thursday, she was named a top-three finalist for the Patty Kazmier Award, presented to the top player in NCAA Division I women’s ice hockey.

But Poulin is adamant about not making it about herself, even when, in some ways, it should be. She has a way of deflecting attention from her accomplishments.

An example: her mother wanted to bring her Team Canada jersey to Senior Night, but Poulin refused.

“No, no. Just stay in the stands, mom,” she recalls saying. “I like to be on the down-low.”

But Poulin still makes sense as a top athlete. She speaks with palpable confidence, moves with comfort in her own body. She must know on some level that she’s great; she just doesn’t want to talk about it. Instead, she just wants to be great.

Yes, Poulin’s legacy is well-cemented with two Olympic gold medals. But she only has one last chance to win a national championship in her adopted country. And with an uncertain future, that adds meaning.

While Poulin and her teammates shake hands with their opponents, a BU fans holds up a sign for her. It reads: Poulin: Capitaine, mon Capitaine. When she walks down the tunnel to her locker room, a group of young fans curl their small bodies over the edge, reaching down to high-five her.

And just like that, she’s gone.