BOURNE — When the top-ranked Nauset Regional High School boys hockey team takes to the ice against no. 6 Marblehead High School in the MIAA Division 3 State Finals this Sunday at 3 p.m., the scene will be very different from the last time the school’s hockey program played in a state championship game 20 years ago.
Because of a scheduling conflict with the FleetCenter — now TD Garden — and the host of that year’s basketball finals, the Division 2 hockey championship was played at the Chelmsford Forum. The Warriors lost to defending champion Saugus High School 6-0 and haven’t made a finals appearance since. That is, until now.
“It was a dump,” recalled longtime Nauset athletic trainer Michele Pavlu, who made the trip to Chelmsford. The game was scheduled for a Wednesday, but Athletic Director Allan Sullivan fought hard to get it moved to Friday.
This year’s Nauset hockey team is everything that dominant Saugus squad was in 2004 — and more. The Warriors are big and strong, and they are incredibly fast — so much so that opponents struggle to get anywhere near them. When they do lose the puck, they win it back almost instantly. They’ve stormed their way to this championship match at the Garden, outscoring postseason opponents 18-2. The game against Marlborough in the Sweet 16 round, a 2-1 win, was their closest contest.
“We’re playing our best hockey at the right time, which is all you can ask for as a coach, and these guys are executing exactly how we want them to,” said Nauset Head Coach Connor Brickley after his team’s 6-0 win over no. 12 Somerset Berkley at Bourne’s Gallo Ice Arena on Sunday. “These guys have been earning it. That’s what we’ve talked about throughout these playoffs.”
The Warriors have twice eclipsed the 6-goal threshold to have the clock run continuously in the third period. They forced Pembroke into a timeout 3 minutes into the game after taking a 3-0 lead in the Elite 8 round and saw Somerset Berkley follow suit at the 4:46 mark of the first period trailing by the same score.
The current seniors have an appreciation for what it feels like to be on the other side of the scoring line, having lost 7-1 to Lynnfield in the Round of 16 as sophomores.
“Those losses really taught us anything can happen,” said senior assistant captain Julian Krivos. “Since then, every kid on this team has worked hard with one goal in mind, and that’s to win a state championship.”
The team has been backed heavily by its fans. The Warriors maxed out capacity at Charles Moore Arena for both the Round of 32 and Round of 16 games and then were the marquee ticket at Gallo Ice Arena for the next two rounds. The Nauset crowd’s chants of “We can’t hear you” and “This one’s over” got little pushback, with opponents’ fans seemingly waiting for the clock to run out.
Over the last two seasons, Nauset hockey has morphed into a juggernaut. At noon on Sunday, 1,100 tickets had been sold for the Nauset-Somerset game. There have been more cameras and more reporters each round, with a television crew turning up at practice in between rounds.
It was, coincidentally, an oversold quarterfinal game at Charles Moore Arena in Orleans last season that sparked a rule change by the MIAA after Watertown’s fans were unable to get into the rink. That meant the Elite 8 round was moved to a neutral venue this year. It didn’t stop the Nauset community from showing up in droves.
“The support has been amazing, and it’s been amazing from day one,” said Brickley, now in his second year with the team. He coached the girls team during the 2021-22 season.
“The kids really feed off it,” he said. “It’s a great thing to play in front of your whole community that has your back.”
The team was met by a sea of fans dressed in pink for the Elite 8 game and in red, white, and blue for the Final Four match, including students with N-A-U-S-E-T painted on their stomachs. The Warriors team bus was given an escort from Charles Moore Arena to the highway by the Orleans police and Orleans fire and rescue ahead of the game in Bourne.
It has been a frenzy of peers, parents, family, Nauset alumni, and friends in the crowd.
“I don’t know if I can speak right now,” said senior assistant captain Aaron Howard after the semifinal victory. “I can’t even explain it. Everything, from all 60 practices, 24 games, just all coming to fruition. It’s great to get there with this team.
“My freshman year was the Covid year,” Howard continued. “We were getting dressed in tents and we won three games, and to come all the way here and make it to the Garden — I wouldn’t ever have thought that it could happen. It gives us a chance to do something no other Nauset hockey team has ever done.”
