Not only were they our opponents this weekend but Hungary will be facing the French national team in May at the World Championships in Russia as well. The French have been a stable member of the A-Pool for years and we looked into how they have done this.
The first week of November is always the international break and this past week the national teams traveled to every corner of Europe. The men's U16 team was in St.Pölten, the U18 was in Telfs, U20 in Vaujany, the men's senior was was in Stavanger and the women's U18 was in Sheffield. Last year the men's senior team was facing Division 1 level teams in South Korea, Italy and Poland, however this year they have graduated up to A-Pool competition in teams such as Norway, Denmark and France. This past weekend everyone pay special attention to france, a team that they will be facing in Russia as well.
There are a lot of them, and not enough of them
The French national team lost to Denmark 6-0 and to Norway by the score of 4-2, in their last game they defeated Hungary 3-1, the key to all their games was the special teams, the power play and the penalty kill. On Saturday against Hungary all four goals in the game were scored on the power play.
The A-Pool games must be a sight to see if the games are mostly decided on the power play. France looks to have picked up on this concept since they have yet to be relegated since their promotion in 2007, and they never finished lower than 14th place,two seasons ago they finished in 8th place when they lost to eventual world champions Russia in the quarter finals. Between 1988 and 2002 they were in the Olympics and the best they finished was in 8th place. This is all from a country that is counted among the larger ones in Europe but only 3.1% of the population plays hockey, whereas in Hungary it is 4.6%
Experience and Knowledge
“Our program is pretty good,”said Dave Henderson the head coach of the French nation in Stavanger after the match against Hungary. “we would like our national teams to continues to work hard and to try to win promotion to the top division in each age group. We do not have the talent pool that larger nations such as the U.S., Canada or Russia has, we can't just pick an choose from among people, we need to develop them and embed in them that they have to work for 60 minutes straight. Our U20, U18 and U16 teams are not at the top level, they are playing at the Division 1 and Division 2 levels, every summer we work hard with these players as well as the U23 team who travels to the Czech Republic and to Slovakia in the summers to gain knowledge and experience.”
Henderson is also a major part of the success, the Canadian-French coach was born in Winnipeg but moved to France when he was 23, we started off as a player-coach, once he hung up the skates he became the head coach for Amiens, since 1999 he has been the U20 national team coach in 2004 he took over the French senior team.
“Currently I’m the French national team coach and since I love my job I don’t even want to think about what will happen in the future. If have a good coaching staff and roster, we’ll see what we can make of this in the future since we have a lot of work to do. I would like to be the coach still in 2017 when we host the world championships, but I know that I am a coach and I need to produce and if they are happy in the federation then I have a job.”
No need to get involved in other teams business
In France the sport of ice hockey is not the most popular sport it is also not one of the most important ones either. However both France and co 2017 host nation team, Germany are in the same group as Hungary, so Hungary will have to put more of an effort into staying in the A-Pool.
“I haven’t seen Hungary play in five-six years but tonight they played great, they will be a good team to face at the world championships in May” When asked if he had any advice for Hungary Henderson had this to say, “I don’t like to get involved in other people’s matters, Diego (Scandella) has been coaching at a high level for a number of years, he and the rest of teh coaching staff will be able to figure out what is the best for Hungary. I am not that familiar with the Hungarian team, so I don't know what they need, but here in Norway they worked hard and that is one thing that every A-Pool team needs to be able to do”