2024/2025 Season Review: Pre-Season

   

 Pre-Season

2023/2024 Season Recap

The 2023/2024 season for the Bees had been a mixture of highs and lows. The Bees took the league by storm with an excellent start to their campaign as Dominik Gabaj and Marcel Balaz were skating rings around the opposition and the Bees found themselves sitting up the top end of the table. As the opposition teams settled and gelled, the Bees found themselves moving down the table as the power giants started to do what they always do and whilst winning the league was probably not a pre-season goal, making the playoffs was and the team achieved that. The playoffs were not kind to the Bees who found themselves in a group including the Phantoms and Knights who were to be the playoff finalists in Coventry. Dominik Gabaj finished 5th in the league scoring for the season and Marcel Balaz finished 8th. Brython Preece found himself 11th in the goalie rankings for the year despite actually doing an excellent job assisted by Brett Shepherd. 

New Name and Logo

One of the issues the Bees faced was the lack of identity within the community. After losing their rink in Bracknell in 2020 they made the move to Slough to share a home with the Slough Jets and the team was renamed Bees Ice Hockey Club. The distance between the old and new rinks coupled with the Covid shutdowns meant that the team lost many of its original fans and they needed to build up a support base in a town which already had a team, albeit in a lower league. In May 2024 the team name was changed to Berkshire Bees putting the Bees on the map and a new logo was introduced incorporating the name change.


Coaching Changes

Dominik Gabaj had proven himself to be a great player coach but the one downside of the combined role was that you can't be in two places at one time. The team thought wouldn't it be good to have an associate coach who had first-hand experience of being a player coach who could manage the bench to allow Dom to do his thing on the ice and Ashley Tait fitted the bill. With many years combining the roles with the Basingstoke Bison he knew exactly what the team needed and not only did he fill that gap but he brought a huge pool of knowledge, ideas  and contacts along with him.

Two-way Partnerships

A major long term issue facing the Bees was the loss of their junior set up when they left Bracknell. With former junior Bees playing an important role within the organisation such as Will Stead and Josh Smith it was clear that an injection of younger players was needed. Slough already had a successful junior system in place and some of the former Bracknell juniors found themselves there and are now feeding into the Slough Jets first team. There was no capacity for the Bees to start their own juniors and as a way to overcome the lack of new talent coming up the ranks the team made partnerships with Streatham IHC and the Cardiff Canucks. The Streatham partnership has worked incredibly well allowing Preston Tombs and Roman Cathcart to join the Bees when they were not playing for their own team. The Canucks partnership started well with Josh Poole making a great impression whilst wearing the black and yellow and Harry Thomas was a reliable back up although not really getting the opportunity to ice as he would have liked. Both players decided to take their two-way deals to Bristol mid-season and Harry definitely got the ice time exposure he was looking for there.
  

Players

A big change came in the off season which was to shake up the structure of many teams in the league as they were now allowed to sign a goaltender as one of their non-British trained players. This decision was to change the Bees massively. It was clear that Dominik Gabaj was keen on bringing in an import goalie and this gave him the opportunity to do so. It was a big gamble as not only did it rely on the goalie staying match fit throughout the season but it meant there was little scope for sharing the goaltending duties. Whilst it was frowned upon by many of the wider hockey community, the Bees, Phantoms and Pitbulls were all going to make this move. This did mean that being a backup at Bees was less enticing which provided its own issues but this decision was going to prove the best one made all season. The question was who was going to be signed?

In total 12 players from the 2023/2024 season started the 2024/2025 season with the team. Some of the previous season's players decided to step down to the league below where they have all flourished. Disappointing many of the Bees fans, Ed Bradley made the move to Swindon. As the Bees were in negotiations to bring in an import goalie Brython Preece made the move to Fife and Gianni Vitali to Reims to free up the third import slot. The fans had to wait until July to find out that Canadian Max Wright was filling the import goalie position. He had impressive stats over the pond but how well would he fit in to UK hockey only time would tell.

Pre-season saw the Bees add to the roster, Ty Cathcart made the move from the Slough Jets and Marcus Mitchell joined from the Oxford City Stars. Both had previously played games for the Bees on loan and had obviously impressed. Further additions to the Bees from Slough were Adam Erskine on a full time contract and Ollie Hemmings-Maher on a two-way deal. Hallam Wilson was also to sign following the sad demise of the Basingstoke Buffalo, he was their top scorer and played alongside former Bee Dan Weller-Evans, more about him later.

There were to be further signings and departures throughout the season, these will be included in our monthly reviews.

Pre-Season Games

In a change from previous years the Bees had one weekend of pre-season games against the Milton Keynes Lightning. The away game in Milton Keynes gave Max Wright his first taste of UK hockey, if he could survive MK he would be ok. He did a great job in the most intimidating rink in the league and most importantly he didn't tear up his contract! The Lightning won 6-4 on the night and they were to get the win the following night in Slough outscoring the Bees 4-2. Whilst the Bees would have been happier with the win there were plenty of positives to take away from the weekend and they weren't a million miles adrift from one of the league title contenders.


Coming Up - A month by month review of the 2024/2025 season

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