Invicta Dynamos head coach Karl Lennon is hoping his team can build on a special year last time out.

The Mos enjoyed a competitive season in the league, in Lennon’s first year in charge, and finished with a trophy too - lifting the Southern Cup in what was their 25th anniversary season.

A new campaign gets going with a trip to Solent Devils on Saturday before returning to Gillingham for their first home game on Sunday, facing the Romford Buccaneers (5.45 pm start).

Lennon said: “I have full confidence in this group to be successful again this season.

“Last year was fantastic, a really special season, it was my first as a coach and of course for me it was a reset, to get us back on track.

“I feel with the development we’ve had and the recruitment and a good number of local players back in the roster again, it only helps us.

“We want a team that is sustainable, that will last more than a few years, rather than having to try and reinvent ourselves every year, we have players who can develop.”

“Self-improvement is our game. We had a couple of areas where we needed to address, in terms of personnel and also in terms of quality, then there are areas for me as a coach that I feel I need to improve upon as well and I have identified those areas.”

This season will see a combined NIHL South Division 1 and South 1 League Cup format, with both league and cup points awarded when teams face each other home and away for the first time in the season. The four teams with the most points will progress to a League Cup semi-final cup stage.

The team finishing at the top of the South Division 1 table after 28 games - playing each team home and away twice - will progress to play the NIHL North Division 1 champions in a National Final. End-of-season play-offs will also take place as usual.

In addition, there will be a five-team round-robin NIHL South 1 Challenge Cup competition, with the team finishing top after home and away fixtures taking the title.

Looking ahead to their first two fixtures, Lennon said: “Solent were second placed last year and we go to their ice rink, much smaller than what we are used to, but we had good results against them last year which we take confidence from and they also had some disruption to their roster, they have lost some good players.

“I don’t know how they will be in terms of their presence from last year but they have a good coach and a good roster so they will be strong. We will have a tough game at the start of the season, but that is good, that’s what we want.

“Romford are a younger team in the league, they also lost a couple of key players who stepped into the league above, and they will be a different proposition, but they pose different challenges, but the objective is the same, to win as many as we can and those two games will be no different.”

The Mos completed their own summer recruitment by signing a second import, Mads Thune, although the Danish centre-man still fits into the coach’s desire to keep a good number of local players on the books.

Thune contacted the Mos in the summer after moving to Kent several years ago.

Lennon said: “He hadn’t played hockey for a few years and wanted to get back into the game, I asked him to come and skate with us to see how he would do and it was quite evident very quickly that he is a very handy player and would absolutely fit the profile of an import at our level.

“We had a bit of back and forth with the league and Ice Hockey UK (the governing body) in terms of getting his paperwork sorted but we managed to do it and he will be the final signing.

“I think he will be the first Dane to play for the Dynamos, not many Danish players play in our league but he has a strong background in hockey, he moved here pre-pandemic and hockey was not his priority because of his working life, which brought him here, but we have managed to get him signed for and we are dead excited about that too.”