Staff photo / Brian Yauger Canfield’s Luke Berry glides up the ice during Saturday’s 4-2 loss to CVCA at Deep Freeze Ice Arena in Boardman. Berry finished with both of the Cardinals’ goals.

BOARDMAN — “Mental mistakes.”

Those were the first words to leave Canfield coach Steve Covelli’s mouth following Saturday’s contest against Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy.

The Cardinals played evenly with the visiting Royals, but spent too much time on the penalty kill, leading to a 4-2 loss in what could very well be a preview of a Baron Cup playoff matchup.

“The whole game is just on mental errors,” Covelli said. “I don’t think that team is better than us. We just beat ourselves.

“This is probably two of the better teams (in our area) playing each other right now. We beat this team four weeks ago and they come back here and beat us. It’s a 2-2 game after two periods, exactly where I thought it would be, it’s just the mental mistakes and penalties on just bad playing. It’s frustrating.”

CVCA struck first, taking advantage of the Cardinals’ slow start to get out to a quick 1-0 lead. They wouldn’t add to it that period.

Both of Canfield’s goals came early in the second period, and each were scored by senior captain Luke Berry.

The Cardinals came out more energized in the second period, and that is purely a result of confidence.

“They believed in themselves,” Covelli said. “If you come out there believing in what you can do and you execute what we teach you in practice, you’ll get results. When you start playing and you make mental mistakes on plays that don’t need to happen and you spend 10 minutes in the penalty box out of a 15-minute period, your chances are going downhill and that’s what we did.”

While physicality is a bonus in hockey, depending on who you ask, it could even be mandatory, ill-timed physicality does nothing but hurt the team. Canfield spent most of the tail end of the second period a man down, and it allowed the Royals to erase Canfield’s 2-1 lead and tie the game back up.

The issues continued into the third period, and CVCA piled on and turned a 2-2 score into 4-2.

“That’s all mental, they’ve got to fix that for themselves,” Covelli said. “I can’t. I can tell you what you need to do, but I can’t make you go out and do it. I tell the kids all the time, I don’t get to put skates on. Before this game, I said ‘No hitting.’ Four penalties were for hitting at the wrong time. Mental breakdowns. That’s my quote of the day. Mental breakdowns cost us again.”

The Cardinals (9-4-1) hit the ice again Saturday on the road against Chagrin Falls. They return home Jan. 28 for senior night against Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin. Covelli thinks this is going to serve as the exact lesson the Cardinals need.

“We need to win out,” Covelli said. “We’re going to come here to skate Monday, work on the powerplay, breakouts again, which we’ve been doing over and over again. Just repeat, repeat, repeat. When they apply it, we’re hard to beat. When they don’t, mental breakdowns.”