Last week the women's senior team was in camp, which was immediately followed up by the U18 camp. This week the coaching staff was back at the Tüskecsarnok for the U15 talent development program and coaches Norbert Buzás and András Kis talked to icehockey.hu
Norbert Búzás talked about the U18 camp that just concluded. “The main goal of the camp was for the girls to get to know the coaching staff and what is expected from them during the upcoming season. We also started to work on our tactics and systems that we will be implementing as we get closer to the world championships since we are basically building a new team. There are girls who played in the team last year but they will have different roles this season. Our game plan is now built on what we do in the neutral zone.
We have a playbook that is very similar to what the guys are using but of course there are some differences which is also found in the women’s hockey as well. Women’s hockey does not have physical contact which means teams can hold onto the puck for a longer period of time. Goals are more often scored off of rebounds, because of this we can not completely play the same style of hockey as the men do.
In women's hockey there is a surprisingly low number of U18 girls however there is a large number of girls in the younger age groups that are talented and are playing at the level that is needed for the U18, that's why we have 14 year olds in camp as well. In the boy's system they can build up the systems as they work through the youth system, we don’t have that luxury and this was why we revamped our system.”
We also asked the coach coach if he could go in depth about the A-B-C format that the women's youth system is set up in. “A large number of girls are in the system and we decided that the best way to develope them would be to split them into three teams, the idea to work with teams B and C together did come up but in the end there woudl have been about 110 girls which si too big to work with. A couple of years ago this number would have been just under 60. It is important that we are aware of every female hockey player but also that they get a tase of the system and hopefully they can develop into a quality player. The A team is the group of U18 girls that are getting ready for the final world championship roster. The B team are younger girls who are not challenged by the U15 roster and also girls who could be called in to the U18 final roster for whatever reason. The C roster is the U15 team which in teh longer will grow up to be the U18 team and later the senior team.