Nauset Reaches Semifinals For Third Consecutive Year, Falls In Bid To Return To Championship Game

BOURNE – Only one team in each division every year can claim the defending champions appellation such as Nauset boys hockey did during the 2025-26 season.

From the season opener’s banner raising at Charles Moore Arena to an early undefeated road trip in Rhode Island to senior night and beyond, the Warriors valiantly, and excitingly, defended their Division 3 title as they soldiered through their quest to make it back to the state tournament’s final game at TD Garden for the third year in a row.

No. 2 Nauset (15-2-3) fell just a game short of that Sunday, losing to No. 3 Medfield (16-4) 5-0 in the semifinals at Gallo Ice Arena — a rematch of last year’s championship, which Nauset took 4-1 for the program’s first-ever state title. The meeting between two of Division 3’s final four teams was also a rematch of an earlier January matchup that Nauset won 4-1.

The semifinal loss ended Nauset’s extended bid for back-to-back titles, as well as head coach Connor Brickley’s triumphant four-year tenure leading the team. Brickley, who played more than 80 games in the NHL last decade, was named the director of hockey at The Winchendon School on Jan. 22. Even with that role beginning immediately, he continued coaching Nauset for one final ride.

“It truly would have been a fairy tale ending if we could really make that one more push, but going to the Garden the past two years, those last two years in a row, that was a feat in itself, and a massive accomplishment,” Brickley said. “And for us to go out and give ourselves an opportunity to go three consecutive years, I mean, that's an amazing job by the players.”

It was an afternoon for Nauset in which the bounces didn’t go their way — not once. Senior Matthew Dickson got the scoring started for Medfield a little over two minutes into the game. Early in the second period, sophomore Luke Dickson added another. Junior Jack Blake added Medfield’s third in the final period, and freshman Max Abramson also scored twice (the second being an empty-netter). Nauset, meanwhile, had a couple of instances where the puck hovered inside Medfield’s crease for a moment but just couldn’t get a clean stick on it. 

Senior goalie Louie Slesar earned the shutout. Medfield will face No. 1 Hanover (16-2-2) in the Division 3 final at TD Garden on Sunday.

“The same team doesn't win the championship every single year,” Brickley said. “It is what it is. That's sports, so obviously we're upset as a group, and we would have loved to have that opportunity, but I mean, that's hockey.”

In addition to last year’s state title, Brickley departs Nauset with the program having earned three consecutive semifinals appearances, plus two appearances in the Division 3 final. Brickley first joined Nauset hockey in 2021, spending a year coaching the girls co-op team with Cape Cod Tech and Monomoy before switching over to the boys.

He was proudest, he said minutes after Sunday’s game, of the “longevity of things.”

“Just the consistency of the team and our team identity, our team culture and just the success that we've been able to have over a handful of years, and that's all because of the guys that we've had in the locker room,” Brickley said. “Just as coaches, we've been able to obviously push the kids to a certain level, but if we didn't have the players that we had in the locker room, as coaches, we wouldn't have been able to really just kind of see what their limits were and see what kind of success they really wanted to have. And they've bought in at such an amazing level, and that's kind of why I think the success that we've been able to have has been so sustainable.”

To get to the semifinals, Nauset defeated No. 7 Scituate (11-7-2) 6-1, also at Gallo Ice Arena last Thursday in the quarterfinals. The win brought Nauset to Division 3’s final four for the third year in a row. That performance, just by measure of goals scored, acted as a nice reply to the prior round’s 1-0 win over No. 18 Taunton (12-7-2).

“I feel like we played a lot harder tonight, I mean, more direct,” senior Zach Weiner said after the quarterfinals. “Got a lot of shots on the net and, I mean, we just kept burying.”

Going out with Brickley are Nauset’s crop of nine graduating seniors, who — as a group and on individual levels — helped raise the program to uncharted heights.

Logan Miller, a senior defenseman, said that Brickley, whom he met around eighth grade, had “always been great to me.”

“He moved down here and I was doing the skills clinics, and I was really excited to have him as my high school coach,” Miller said. “And I'm glad the bond that we built going into our senior year was obviously amazing.”

Those senior players are Brody Bassett, Matthew Breda, Lincoln Burhoe, Jake Eldredge, Oscar Escher, Max Lanzetta, Tyler Manchuk, Miller and Weiner.

“They did such a good job over the past few years to really just continue to hold the team and the program to an extremely high standard,” Brickley said.

And while it was alluring to constantly think of the Warriors as title-defenders while they made their way back to the late stages of the state tournament with a chance to repeat as champions, that was never the thinking for the coaches and players inside the Nauset locker room. They acknowledged how hard it is to win a title and all the variables that go into it.

“Today was a good example, as far as, like, how to get a win — the bounces that you get, create and then you capitalize and stuff like that,” Brickley said. “You just need so many different things to go your way really, so for us, it was really just about the preparation every single day, just making sure the team is playing the way that you want them to play.”