GANGNEUNG, South Korea — One game at a time, they say. All of these games matter.

But one game at a time is roughly how these teams measure every four years. They play for the gold medal. Whoever wins moves straight to defending. Whoever doesn’t — and in every Olympics since 2002, the United States hasn’t — slides into agonizing re-evaluation.

So even though the U.S. women’s hockey team fell 2-1 to the Canadians on Thursday, the fact that the Americans outshot their rivals 45-23 is important because they know they can perforate the defense in the inevitable gold-medal game. That the Canadians won anyway matters because they have won five straight games against the Americans.

“We’re not going to make too much of it,” U.S. veteran Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson said.

“I think it puts us in a spot as far as confidence goes,” Canadian coach Laura Schuler said.

While neither has locked up a spot in the gold-medal game yet, both long since secured byes to the semifinals.

When they talk about “making too much of it” or the state of their confidence, neither side is thinking about the next game. They are talking about the next time they play each other, which would come in the gold-medal game.

These players have played against each other in every year of their national team careers. When they look across the ice, they see mutual friends and longstanding enemies.

Four Americans and five Canadians played college hockey at Wisconsin. Twenty players combined played in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. They’ve run into each other in Frozen Fours and world championships and other places.

In a sport with a small upper class, the overlap is inevitable and complicated. The biggest moments in this rivalry — such as the United States’ blown two-goal lead in the gold-medal game in Sochi — resonate.

“It’s what we live for,” U.S. forward Amanda Kessel said. “The intensity is there every single shift.”

The Canadians will carry the confidence if these teams meet next week. The Americans will carry the doubt. They have now lost five straight games to the Canadians, despite winning the last four world championship gold medals.

Those medals do matter. But the one they’ll play for here simply matters more.