Goodnight and Good Luck – Marcel Balaz and Roman Cathcart

The number of remaining Bison is now even lower with the announcement that Marcel Balaz has signed for Bees IHC and Roman Cathcart joins the Slough Jets.

Marcel Balaz. Photo (c) Jo Loat

34 year old Balaz came to Britain off the back of a relatively standard resume for an Eastern European coming to this country. Balaz had an extensive career in his native Slovakia, coming through the youth system at Extraliga club Kosice. Like many Slovaks he was loaned out a lot and split time between Kosice and teams in the Slovak 2^nd tier where he was a prolific point scorer, mostly with HC 46 Bardejov. After time with Michalovce and Humenne, Balaz moved to France in 2019 to join Dunkerque.

After muddling through the pandemic as part of Albatros de Brest, Balaz joined Clermont who had an astronomically bad year. Winning single digit number of games, he was announced by the Bison to more derision than fanfare as many opposition fans claimed he wasn’t of the quality for the league. Balaz responded by scoring 25 goals and 66 points in 52 games, including a last minute game winner over the Bees in Slough.

When Marcel Balaz signed for the Herd, I said that he needed to be Michal Klejna than Filip Martinec. Thankfully he was that. Many people felt and said that Balaz wasn’t good enough for the National Division, I said he was and I think that, in the main, I was right on that. An import who is over a point per game is what you’re after and he did what he needed to. He lead the team in shorthanded goals and had 4 game winners, the numbers speak of a man who did his job as best as he could on a team that didn’t live up to its potential.

Where Balaz really excelled though was all the little things. Marcel Balaz is a workhorse. He passes well, he works hard, he goes into the corners he backchecks. He does all the bits you want all your top end players to do. As a player you want your top end guys to have a well rounded game and to do a bit of everything. As the team’s number one centre, he was defensively responsible, distributed the puck and put up points.

The issue for Marcel was that he was less visible at the flashy things and really good at those things people don’t pay as much attention to. This in itself isn’t a terrible thing but in a two import league as the National Division was last season, a guy who isn’t as potent in attack or at least couldn’t put the team on his back and drag a team through sometimes feels like the wrong man to have.

I don’t think this is necessarily fair to Balaz, he’s a very good hockey player but I think a three import league suits him better. Like his former team mate Gaël Lubwele, depending on who the Bees sign, Balaz can now be set up to succeed a bit better. Freed from being arguably asked to do too much, a team with a couple of decent solid goalscorers in Dom Gabaj, Vanya Antonov and Edgars Landsbergs who Balaz played with at times in Basingstoke, means that the Slovak can focus more on his natural game.

Roman Cathcart. Photo (c) Jo Loat

At the other end of the experience scale is Roman Cathcart. The 16-year-old was added into the Bison roster alongside Ollie Hemmings-Maher on what was effectively a 4 way contract seeing the two play for the Bison u18s, the Basingstoke Buffalo, Slough Jets and the Bison across the season.

In 2022/23 Cathcart saw minimal time at the lower levels, scoring 7 points in 5 games at u18 and an incredible 5 points in his lone South 2 appearance with the Buffalo. The majority of his time came at South 1, scoring 2 goals and 9 points in 20 games with Slough and a lone assist in 11 games with the Herd in the National Division.

I’ve said it a few times, but it bears repeating here. I really enjoyed watching Roman Cathcart play. On the Zero Pucks Given podcast at the end of the season when talking about Slough, I said in a season that saw the Bison struggle that one of the better parts of it was watching the Bison’s teenage duo race about. Where Hemmings-Maher was more scoring threat and finesse, Cathcart is a bathtub’s load of physicality.

At 16 years old, Roman is already a very big lad. Like his older brother, Ty, like his relatives the Bairds, Roman was not built to go round you but through you and watching him go chasing after people with zero care of fear was enjoyment personified.

There’s some refining to do obviously. It’s very easy to pigeonhole players of Roman’s skillset and want them to be like Tom Wilson but he really could be a British version of Tom Wilson. 9 points from 20 games at 16 is a very promising start and hopefully Jets’ coach Lukas Smital, a man with a real track record of developing youngsters, can utilise Roman to his potential. He doesn’t and won’t be getting top line minutes as a 17-year-old next season but I’ll certainly be checking out Jets games to see how he progresses. We talk about smoothing down the edges of younger players but some players were made to be sandpaper.

Both players are certain to be popular at their respective Berkshire sides, albeit for different reasons. We wish them both well.

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