Felteau, Chiokadze lead Seahawks over Golden Bears

PORTSMOUTH, R.I. – Freshman Jonathan Felteau (Peabody, Mass.) scored a shorthanded and a power play goal to lift Salve Regina to a 3-1 win over Western New England in ECAC Northeast action Wednesday night. The win improved the Seahawks to 11-13 on the year, tying the most wins in a season for Salve Regina, and 9-4 in the conference. With the loss, the Golden Bears slip to 10-13 on the year and 4-8 in the league.

The Golden Bears were just eight seconds away from killing off the Seahawks third power play of the game in the second period but Felteau collected a pass from sophomore Peter Gintoli (Monroe, Conn.) to net his seventh goal of the season at the 4:43 mark in the middle period. Salve Regina killed off back-to-back power plays in the middle of the second to keep the slim 1-0 lead after two periods.

Western New England got whistled for two penalties within 36 seconds of each other to create a 5-on-3 situation for the Seahawks. Felteau faced off against junior Brandon Stroud (Clarksville, Ind.) and won the faceoff for Salve Regina. Gintoli collected the puck off the win and fed it to sophomore Marc Biggs (Plano, Texas) for Felteau to score his eighth goal of the year on the power play to give Salve Regina a 2-0 lead in the third with 9:50 to play.

Gintoli sent home his ninth of the season just over two minutes later to give the Seahawks a comfortable 3-0 lead at the 13:38 mark. Junior John Scorcia (Hudson, Fla) sent the puck to Gintoli for him to push it under the WNE's goalie's pads.

Western New England got one back with just under three minutes to play as senior Brian Prost (Parma, Ohio) sent the puck high into the right hand corner of the net off assists from senior John Kelly (Staten Island, N.Y.) and senior Cam Napolitan (E. Longmeadow, Mass.) to cut the lead to 3-1. The Golden Bears pulled their goalie with 1:30 to play but sophomore David Chiokadze (Langhorne, Pa.) kept the lead to two goals despite WNE having an extra skater.

The WNE goal at 17:16 snapped a 121:54 minute scoreless streak for the reigning conference Goalie of the Week.

Chiokadze finished the day with 35 saves in the net for his fourth-straight 30+ save night and his fifth win of the year while his WNE counterpart, junior Tim Carr (Pine Bush, N.Y.) made 48 stops between the pipes in the loss.

Felteau is now tied for second in the league for freshman scoring with 17 points (8g, 9a) on the year.

Western New England travels to Nichols on Saturday for a  4:40 p.m. start in ECAC Northeast action while the Seahawks wrap up the regular season with Johnson & Wales on Sunday, Feb. 23 at 4:35 p.m. at the Portsmouth Abbey.