With New Role At Winchendon, Nauset’s Brickley Staying For One Last Playoff Run

ORLEANS – After four years, the 2025-26 season will be the final one at Nauset for boys hockey head coach Connor Brickley, who was named the director of hockey at the Winchendon School on Jan. 22.

Brickley, who played 81 games in the National Hockey League from 2015-2019, led the Warriors to a Division 3 championship last season. At Winchendon, Brickley will lead the private day and boarding school’s hockey programming and serve as head coach for the girls U19 program. The role began immediately, but Brickley is finishing out the season with Nauset as they seek a second consecutive state title.

“We have the team to do it first and foremost,” he said. “We have a team that's primed to make another deep run and get themselves another state championship, and we have a lot of players here that are hungry to do so. And so we will obviously want to do right by them first and foremost, and we want to make sure that we put all of our energy and our focus and our mindset into making that goal achievable in itself. And that's our attitude right now.”

Brickley took over the Warriors boys team in 2022, a year after coaching the Cape Cod Furies (a former girls co-op team between Nauset, Cape Cod Tech and Monomoy). When Brickley stepped into the position, the Nauset boys hockey program had just suffered through a controversy in which the team’s head coach a season prior, Drew Locke, had been fired following an incident with a player in the locker room. The decision to dismiss Locke was subsequently met with protest by other players and parents, and Locke at one point was presumably considering litigation. 

Brickley brought stability to the program, then glory. The Warriors had lost in the second round of the tournament the year before Brickley joined the team. In his first year, they reached the quarterfinals. Two years in, Brickley and the Warriors lost in the state finals. A season later in 2025, they won the championship. 

Now, Nauset (13-1-2 and ranked No. 1 in Division 3) is in pole position for a bid at back-to-back state titles. And even after beginning the new job at Winchendon, Brickley is sticking around for one last tournament run. When the possibility arose that he could start at Winchendon while remaining with Nauset for the season, Brickley made it clear that that was an opportunity he wanted to take.

“The last thing I ever wanted to do was be a distraction for the team, so I really just wanted to make sure that these guys had that understanding too, that nothing's changing,” he said.

In a press release, Winchendon's head of school Sean Duncan said Brickley was “a leader who understands that athletics, at their best, are about far more than performance alone.”

“I’m very excited for the opportunity,” Brickley said. “It's just another step for me as far as things that I want to continue to do and continue to help build programs and play with like-minded athletes, coaching players that really want to make a big push for achieving some pretty high dreams of theirs.”

In addition to working at Nauset and Winchendon, Brickley is the girls director for the Northeast Generals youth hockey program. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot to juggle currently. On Monday, he was in Winchendon (about 150 miles away from Nauset’s home at Charles Moore Arena in Orleans) for practices, then he was back on the Cape for the Warriors’ 9 p.m. practice that night. The Warriors are 3-0 (as of Tuesday) since Brickley was announced as Winchendon’s director of hockey on Jan. 22.

“It's a lot, but it is what it is right now,” he said. “You’ve got to go through it, and we’ve got to make sure, because we're in this for the right reasons here and it's all about the kids, so you’ve got to make sure you're showing up for them.”