The women's U-18 world championships is on top of us and Budapest has the privilege of hosting the tournament running from March 23rd through the 30th in the Ice Palace.
The tournament will be made up of two groups, Group A contains the teams from Czech Republic, Finland, Canada and Japan, with Group B being Russia, USA, Sweden and Hungary. After the group stage the two last place teams will play a best of three series to see who will be relegated while the two group winners will get a bye into the semifinals. The second place teams will play the other group’s third place team with the winners moving onto the semi finals.
It is expected that the U.S. and Canada will breeze through the group stage however the rest of the teams pretty much all have a chance of making it to the semi finals. The Hungarian team is feeling pretty good about their chances to make it to the knockout stage. “Realistically speaking the U.S. and Canada are the best but the rest of the field is about the same, where anything can happen in every game.” said Hungarian head coach Norbert Búzás. The players echo Búzás’ expectations “We are expecting to stay in and not get relegated and the minimum is that we reach the same level as we did last year.” said forward Kriszti Krivi.
When the question was asked to goalkeeper Anikó Németh she said “In the group stage the U.S. will be the hardest team we will face, but I’m real interested to see what we can do against Sweden since we have already faced them before.” Forward Réka Dabasi added to her teammate’s comments “If we play to our potential advancing from the group stage is completely realistic”.
The Hungarian team is actually a relatively experienced team with 15 girls coming back from last years team and 10 of them playing on last years senior women's national team as well. Also adding to the team chemistry was having a team playing in the Austrian league so that the girls can become used to playing together during the regular season despite playing for different clubs in Hungary. General manager Csaba Gömöri who coaches the team in the Austrian league said “It is great that the staff can work together with some of the girls during the season and it has been a great help when evaluating the girls during the season.”
This tournament isn't end of a one year journey but instead a five year program that the coaching staff has been working on that is coming to fruition in front of the ice hockey world’s eyes. “We have become a little family playing together for so long, we know what the other is going to do on the ice.” say Krivi
The coaching staff is lead by Buzás, joining him will be Roger Holéczy, Bence Orsi, and GM Csaba Gömöri.