In 2017, former Ocean City defender John Thompson took over as head coach as Tim Oswald shifted to a front office role as Sporting Director. Despite finishing with a better regular season record (9-4-1) than the previous year's Eastern Conference championship team, the Nor'easters missed out on the PDL playoffs due to a change in the playoff format. In 2018, the division was even more competitive after adding the Long Island Rough Riders and a second straight nine-win season (9-5-0) wasn't enough to qualify for the postseason, and because the US Soccer Federation reduced the number of Open Division teams that were included in the 2019 tournament, they did not qualify for the U.S. Open Cup.