Over the last five years, Franziska Busch has had a sneak preview at the future of German women’s hockey. Currently an assistant coach for Germany at the 2022 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship, Busch has coached her country’s U18 squad at four World Championships, including three as head coach.

In 2020, Busch helped lead the U18 team to a gold medal in the Division I Group A tournament, earning promotion to the top division. Five players from that team, Heidi Strompf, Nina Christof, Lilly Uhrmann, and Lilli and Luisa Welcke, are now on the senior roster in Denmark.

“I like their development a lot,” Busch said of the players she’s seen rise through U18 up to the senior team. “I saw them the last time last year in the summer camps, and now in summer camps again, and I think they learned a lot. They've had fun playing in the senior team right now. They are growing up like women now.”

A former national team forward herself, Busch first represented Germany in 2004, and went on to compete at the 2006 and 2014 Olympics. A five-time alternate captain, she was an efficient goal scorer in the Frauen-Bundesliga, playing for OSC Eisladies Berlin and ECDC Memmingen. She retired from the national team following the 2014 Olympics, and got her coaching start with a U16 boys team in 2016. Two years later, Busch took part in the Coach Development Program at the IIHF Women’s High-Performance Camp, and later served as interim head coach of the senior team prior to Thomas Schadler’s appointment. Before heading to Denmark (her first team staff gig at a senior Worlds) Busch was invited to be a guest coach at the pre-season camp for the Kassel Huskies, a team in the second German men’s league. 

“I remember back in the tournaments I played, it didn’t matter if we were successful or not, it was just fun to play with the girls,” Busch said of how her playing experience impacts her coaching style. “I want the team here to think about that. It’s a special time and you never know how long you can have this time, and they just have to enjoy it. Even if we lose those games – this year at U18 Worlds, we won the first game and it didn’t matter at the end [Germany was relegated] – I want them to enjoy it, the experience and the time together with the team.”

Germany’s best World Championship performance was a fourth place finish in 2017, when the team finished at the top of Group B and beat Russia 2-1 to progress to the semi-finals. Despite eventually losing 8-0 to Finland in the bronze medal game, it was a monumental moment for the Germans. This was followed, however, by seventh and eighth-place finishes at the 2019 and 2021 World Championships, and the team failed to qualify for both the 2018 and 2022 Olympics.

“We have a few players who retired after the last season, so we are a very young and maybe unexperienced team. It’s all about experience now,” said Busch. Goalie Jennifer Harss and former captain Julia Zorn are amongst those who have recently retired. “We have a good team, experienced and inexperienced, and very excited players. I think that for the older players it’s nice to see some [younger players] who are really excited to be here. I think we are on a good way to be back in that direction.”

For Busch, it has been rewarding seeing players who she has also coached at the U18 level contributing at the 2022 Worlds. Luisa Welcke scored Germany’s first of the tournament against Hungary, and Nina Christof got Germany’s third period comeback against Sweden started with a power-play goal.

“On the U18 team, they are very offensive, and now they learn a lot about defence and work in the D zone,” Busch said of the Welcke twins. “Now they have an experienced player [Bernadette Karpf] between them and she should lead them, and maybe play more defence so they can put the offence power in.” 

Busch noted that even the young players are getting a lot of ice time, a prime example being Nina Jobst-Smith. The 20-year-old University of Minnesota-Duluth defender is playing in just her second World Championship and is leading all German players in ice time, with 55:13 played through two games. Like with Luisa and Lilli, she too is matched with a more experienced player: Olympian and former University of North Dakota player Tanja Eisenschmid. 

“I want to give the girls in the U18 years as much as I can, so they can do the step to the senior team,” Busch said about what her goals are for herself as a coach. “When I see that now here there are four or five players who went through the U18 program, that makes me proud, [like when] they say ‘Oh yeah, you told me a few years ago, this and that.’”

Having logged a 4-2 loss to Hungary and 4-3 shootout loss to Sweden, Germany continues the hunt for their first win on Monday against Czechia.