Seahawks defeat Golden Bears to close out regular season; await playoff opponent

The Western New England University ice hockey team fell to Salve Regina University, 5-2, on Senior Day this afternoon in Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) action at the Olympia Ice Center.

Top Performers
• Pionk celebrated senior day with a goal and an assist, while Twietmeyer dished out a pair of helpers.
• Junior defenseman Matthieu Audet (Campbell, Calif.) also found the back of the net for Western New England.  

• Senior forward Tommy Evangelista (Methuen, Mass.) led the way for Salve Regina with one goal and three assists.
• Sophomore forward Shaun Patry (Penfield, N.Y.) also turned in a multi-point performance with two goals and one assist.

Game Review
• Junior forward Evan Schmidbauer (San Diego, Calif.) opened the scoring for the Seahawks at the 12:12 mark of the first period, and senior Evan Schultz (Durham, N.H.) made it 2-0 less than three minutes later.
• Western New England utilized a power play opportunity to get back into the game, as Audet scored with the help of Pionk and Twietmeyer 1:20 into the second period.
• Patry restored Salve Regina's two-goal lead midway through the period, however, before adding another goal at the 14:11 mark as the Seahawks claimed a 4-1 advantage.
• The Golden Bears got one back late in the period, as Pionk stuffed home a rebound to cut Western New England's deficit to 4-2 heading into the second intermission.
• Despite putting ten shots on target over the final 20 minutes, the Golden Bears were unable to put one past Salve Regina sophomore netminder Blake Wojtala (Trenton, Mich.). Evangelista tacked on a late empty net goal to extend the final margin to three.

Notes
• Salve Regina outshot Western New England 39-31 and held a 44-30 advantage in the faceoff circle.
• Western New England sophomore goaltender Kevin Gollmer (Flourtown, Pa.) finished with 34 saves in net.

Up Next
Western New England (7-15-2, 4-12-1 CCC) wraps up its regular season slate on Tuesday at Wentworth, while Salve Regina (14-7-4, 11-4-3 CCC) awaits its opponent for next week's CCC Tournament.