Both the Women’s senior and U18 teams are in training camp this week with a number of changes compared to last season. A generation of players have “graduated” out of the U18 team that had been the backbone of the team the past couple of seasons. The coaching staff has also had a major overhaul which necessarily is not a bad thing.
Half of the coaching duo of Norbert Buzás and Csaba Gömöri has changed as Gömöri has moved on and been replaced by Tibor Marton. This season is Marton’s first with working with a girls team. Buzás and Marton are familiar with each others work and style since they are both coaches with MAC Budapest. Also joining the coaching staff is a mentor Canadian Dwayne Gylywoychuk, while Slovak Zuzana Tomcikova will be one of the two goalie coaches, also as a mentor, with the returning Tamás Szabó.
Gylywoychuk brings valuable experience to the coaching staff since he was an assistant on last years Canadian Women’s U18 World championship team, as well as being a head coach in the WHL.
The U18 team will be playing in a tournament in France this coming weekend where they will be playing three matches against the French U18 national team. Therefore the coaching staff was preparing for the French road trip and keeping an eye to the future. It will be interesting to see who the next batch of U18 players will be stepping up and taking the lead. Tibor Marton did say that individually there might not be the same amount of skilled players but there is a larger talent pool to draw from than the preview generation.
For the senior team the advantage of this upcoming season is that everyone is a year older and has another year of experience under their belts.