Sean Flanagan is entering his 11th season as a member of the Cornell men's hockey coaching staff and his second as associate head coach.
During Flanagan's time on East Hill, the Big Red has posted a 192-78-34 (.688) record, winning at least 18 games in each season with seven 20-win campaigns. Cornell has also claimed the nation's highest winning percentage twice — in 2017-18 (.788) and 2019-20 (.862) — won three Cleary Cups as ECAC Hockey's regular-season champion, and captured back-to-back ECAC Hockey Championship titles in 2024 and 2025.
Flanagan has also played a pivotal role in developing Cornell's faceoff unit. The Big Red has ranked in the top 10 nationally in faceoff win percentage in each of the last five seasons and seven of the last eight. Cornell has won at least 54 percent of its draws in each of the last four seasons, highlighted by a third-best national ranking in 2025-26 (54.5 percent) — a season in which junior forward Jonathan Castagna won 439 faceoffs, seventh in the country. The Big Red ranked sixth nationally in faceoff win percentage in 2024-25 (54.4 percent) and fifth in 2022-23 (54.4 percent). In 2023-24, Cornell won 54.2 percent of its draws, led by Gabriel Seger '24's 488 faceoff wins (fifth nationally) and a seventh-best faceoff win percentage (.588) among Division I players with at least 600 faceoffs taken.
One of Flanagan's primary duties through the 2024-25 season was overseeing Cornell's power play unit, with the Big Red converting at 20 percent or better in three of his first nine seasons. The unit's best stretches came in 2019-20, when Cornell converted on 26.4 percent of its opportunities — fifth in Division I and second in ECAC Hockey — and in 2022-23, when the Big Red ranked seventh nationally at 25.0 percent, tops among ECAC Hockey programs.
Flanagan joined the Big Red after serving as director of hockey operations at UMass Lowell in 2015-16. Prior to that, he spent three seasons as an assistant coach at Division III Hobart (2012-15), working under former Cornell assistant coach Mark Taylor, where he helped the Statesmen claim the 2015 ECAC West title.
No stranger to ECAC Hockey, Flanagan played five seasons at St. Lawrence, appearing in 121 career games and totaling 52 points (12-40—52). A Canton, N.Y. native who was born and raised in the same city where he played collegiately, Flanagan was part of three Saints teams that reached ECAC Hockey Championship weekend (2007, 2009, 2010) and served as alternate captain his senior season. He went on to play professionally with the ECHL's Las Vegas Wranglers and Quad City Mallards (2011-13).
Flanagan earned a bachelor of arts degree in history from St. Lawrence in 2010, with a minor in sports studies and exercise sciences, and a master of education degree from St. Lawrence in 2011.
Flanagan and his wife, Heather, have two children, a daughter, Shea, and son, Cam.
