Staff photo / Brian Yauger. Canfield’s Ty Novotny (38) defends against a Westlake player during the Cardinals’ loss on Sunday.

BOARDMAN — It’s a season of growth for the Canfield Cardinals.

With five freshmen suiting up this season, the growing pains are apparent, but following the team’s 6-1 loss to Westlake on Sunday, coach Steve Covelli is optimistic about the team’s future.

“You have to let them know they’re progressing,” Covelli said. “You have to take the game, dissect it, go to practice and get them positive. You can’t beat them down. We’re staying on the positive side. I mean, I’m seeing passes that are only off six to eight inches and those passes weren’t even happening at the beginning of the year, so the progression is going well.

“You have to remember. There’s seven players on (Westlake’s) team that are 18 years old. I’ve got six 14 and 15-year olds. We’re progressing. They’re going to grow mentally and physically. We’re going to grow and they have. From here to now, we’re lightyears ahead, so the future looks bright.”

Cardinals freshman forward Gavin Rupert scored the team’s lone goal of the afternoon, sandwiching a pair of first period goals by the Demons.

The story this season has been simple. A few bad minutes sink what could be a promising game.

That happened again Sunday as the Cardinals trailed 2-1 entering the second period, but a bad stretch partway through the period led to four Westlake goals in quick succession.

After that, the deficit just became inescapable.

“We played this team last week, and they scored four goals in six minutes. We played today and we gave up those goals in six minutes again,” Covelli said. “We out-shot them, we out-hit them, we won the shots on goal and we won the faceoffs. We were in the penalty box more and we had a six-minute blip. It’s coming (together) though. The future looks good.”

Canfield drops to 3-6 on the year with the loss. They expected this to be a season of growth, while building toward future success.

A big part of the team’s future is defenseman Luke Scolieri. Despite being just a sophomore, he’s one of the team’s biggest leaders.

“We have to look towards next season,” Scolieri said. “We’ve been playing (well), we’ve made a lot of improvements over the whole year. We just can’t get our heads going. We’ve got to stay chill and keep playing.”

Another player to keep an eye on is freshman Ty Novotny. Novotny entered the program as a defenseman, but has seen a shift to forward this season.

It’s rounded out his game more, which once again, will only help the team in the long term.

“The adjustment has been good,” Novotny said. “It’s going to help me with D in the future anyway. But I like generating more offense, which is what I thought we needed, and I like playing for my freshmen and it’s just going to help us in the future.”

They’re a close-knit group as well, which has the players excited for what lies ahead.

“We don’t talk a lot, but we just know where we are because we’ve played with each other for so long, so it’s really nice,” Novotny said.

The Cardinals travel to Normandy to face the Invaders on Jan 21. Start time is set for 3 p.m.

byauger@tribtoday.com