The Women's U18 national team is back in Hungary after competing at the 2015 Division 1 World Championships in Vaujany France, where in a very balanced field they just missed out on a 3rd place finish. Tibor Marton recaps the past season.
How much experience did you gain during your first time at the world championships?
This season was my first association with women's hockey in any form during my coaching career, I did have some preconceived ideas about women's hockey which proved to be false during the season. Through out the team there was a group effort to get womens hockey on the same level as mens in public opinion both on and off the ice.
How much did the girls improve throughout the season?
Our goal was to work with the largest number of girls as possible. One reason was that we (the coaching staff) would be able to familiarize ourselves with a larger number of players and the girls to get to know the program, the other reason was to create competition within the U18 program. We do not have the same size talent pool as the men's U18 has, we have about 35-37 skaters we can pick from and that includes a couple fo 13-14 year olds as well. During the training camps we were not really able to work on individual skills, there was an emphasis on learning the system and having the spirit of competition. Aside from on ice training we spent a lot of time in the classroom working on understanding the system that we were implementing. We had a number or scrimmages and friendlies where we were able to work on in game situations. Luckley this is a group that wants to improve and we did not have any problems during the preparation period.
What were the girls able to show from what they learned and practiced.
Everyone was working to the best of their abilities, Aside from the first period against Austria and the second half against Germany everyone was able to do this. Everyone was able to see what we were trying to achieve, we were able to play a disciplined and tactical style of game throughout the tournament. Against Germany once we were not able to convert on our scoring chances we started to play outside of the system and started run after the score.
Overall how would you rate the world championships?
Like I mentioned from the start our goal was to keep up with Austria and Slovakia, and we were able to achieve this. Austria did not really have a chance against us even though we did not play well. Norway was probably the hardest opponent for us, the girls did everything that was asked for in the 3-0 loss, probably the biggest reason for the loss was the physical difference between the two squads. This resulted in us not having any chances right in front of their net. Against Slovakia we played very disciplined game which resulted in a nice victory, which also could have happened against Germany as well. For us the 7-0 loss was very painful and was hard for us to put behind us because it did not accurately reflect the difference between the two teams. After the Germany game we knew that we owed our selves at least half a good game which we did not produce against Germany, but came up with against France. During the season we played three exhibition games against France they beat us easily all three times, however this time around we lost in overtime to the eventual champions. This was a game where both sides deserved to win, and I was completely satisfied with the way we played.
What are the areas where the team could improve?
One of the biggest problems is that the girls have not played that many games as a high level as this world championships, a number of girls play in the boys U14 level, some girls had almost twice the ice time in the games as they usually do. We need to look at the long term and try to get as many girls involved in the program as possible. We need to schedule more games against other countries, we need to get more real live game situations where they feel the pressure of competing against another country. What would be great if we took the countries that make up the Visegrád 4 and have all of them host a tournament before the world championships.