Brendan Gibbons’ junior hockey career with the North American Hockey League’s Maine Nordiques is nearing its end, but his legacy will live on for years to come.
The 6-foot, 200-pound right winger led the Nordiques during the regular season with 17 goals and 41 assists for 58 points, and was a cog in helping Maine reach the NAHL East Division finals. The Wakefield, R.I., native will be playing Division 1 hockey next year at the Air Force Academy.
Matt Pinchevsky, the Nordiques’ head coach and director of player personnel and development, saw Gibbons’ talent in spurts during the 2021-22 season, when he overcame illness and injuries to contribute 20 goals and 14 assists over 37 games.
“I called him the king of comebacks last year,” Pinchevsky said. “In between the injuries and illness, you could see what he was capable of, and then there would be something that would put him on the shelf for two-and-a-half to four weeks.”
Pinchevsky said the “king of comebacks” was a nice little preview to what a dominant leader and high-character person Gibbons would become this season.
“We are trying to foster a whole room of leaders, but Brandon Gibbons is the captain of the Maine Nordiques through and through with how he speaks and performs,” Pinchevsky said. “He makes everybody understand that they matter and are an important piece of the team. He’s really steered the ship in such an incredible way this year.”
Gibbons thinks he is an approachable captain who leads by example but is not afraid to set his teammates straight.
“I feel like I am pretty consistent with my message,” Gibbons said. “The coaches do a good job of supporting me and giving me all the confidence that I need to lead this group. I obviously have a good leadership group to lean on, too. I couldn’t do it without any of them.”
Pinchevsky said Gibbons created a mantra with the phrase, “If you love the game, it will love you back," which helped the team turn its season around into a playoff contender.
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“Guys that are going to be in our dressing room next year when he is a Division 1 player are still going to be saying it,” the coach said. “I’m still going to be saying it 10 years from now. He got other people to believe in it and it turned our season around. We started 1-6, 2-7, and next thing you know we are playoff-bound for seven months and in the division finals.”
Pinchevsky said Gibbons has also been a great representative of the NAHL. Gibbons pointed at the NAHL logo after he scored in the team’s 7-0 win over the U.S. national Under-17 team as part of the NAHL Showcase in Blaine, Minn., in September.
“I think that showed a tremendous amount of intelligence and awareness on his part, where he didn’t feel like he was captaining the Maine Nordiques against Team USA, but he was captaining as a league representative,” Pinchevsky said. “He wasn’t trying to do that to look cool, but he did that with purpose. It just shows how he thinks of things that are way bigger than himself whenever he laces up the skates and plays the game.”
Gibbons classifies himself as an “offensive power forward” and said he has kind of evolved into his own presence on the ice this season. He credited the coaching staff for giving him the confidence to be creative and let him play his game, and find different ways to produce.
“I have become more confident with the puck, and my playmaking ability has improved,” Gibbons said. “I try to make whatever play I think is right but will do whatever is working for me at that moment. If I’m on a two-on-one and I’m scoring, I’ll probably take the shot, but if I can’t really find my scoring touch, I’ll look to try and find that backdoor pass. Part of the game that I need to work on is my defensive side, but I would classify myself as an offensive power forward.”
Gibbons has put in the work to become a great player. Pinchevsky said he has watched other teams’ captains, coaches and scouts watch Gibbons in warmups doing edge work with the puck in the neutral zone between the blue and red lines, like single-leg isolations and inside-outside edge work, while handling the puck with his head up to work on his posture and activate his core.
“The looks I have seen from our opponents’ staff is, ‘What is this kid doing?’ ” Pinchevsky said. “Why is their leading scorer and captain doing edge work like he’s in some summer training session right before he’s about to play in a North American Hockey League game? It’s such a strong example of how he’s never satisfied. He’s always trying to get better and does it with purpose. He’s a tremendously self-aware young man that is going to grow into a leader in life after the game as well.”
Pinchevsky said Gibbons also is “completely family-oriented,” both with his immediate family and his billet family, Eric and Terri Levesque.
“It’s a really special relationship that I have been able to observe,” he said. “Outside of going away to prep school, it was kind of the first billet experience that he had. They have a toddler (Bowen) and an older son in elementary school (Blake), and just to see his connection with them postgame and some of the things he said when they are having dinner and just being a family has really helped him grow.”
Gibbons was advised to join the Nordiques after playing the 2020-21 season in the United States Premier Hockey League’s National Collegiate Development Conference with the Boston Junior Bruins and the P.A.L. Junior Islanders.
He previously attended prep school at St. Mark’s in Southboro, Mass., where he was coached by Carl Corazzini (Framingham, Mass.), who “helped develop me into the player who I am.”
Gibbons, who turns 21 in July, wanted to play Division 1 hockey since he was 14 and said attending St. Mark’s was the first step.
“I was playing for the Providence Capitals in Rhode Island, and I was going to a public high school, but I needed to go to prep school, so my parents made the decision to send me to St. Mark’s and it was the correct step I needed to do,” he said.
Gibbons will be attending Air Force Academy with his younger brother, Andrew, a center/right winger who played three games with the Nordiques during the regular season.
“We both loved the campus, the coaches liked our game, it was pretty much a no-brainer,” he said. “It’s going to be fun, especially playing with him.”
