The Carolina Hurricanes made a late push, but a terrible start was too much for them to overcome Saturday night, as they fell 6-3 to the Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Arena.
The Canes talked a lot about needing to start off on the right foot coming out of the 4 Nations break, but so too did the Maple Leafs it seems.
Carolina gave up the first goal of the game less than three minutes in as a Brent Burns blind turnover led to Alex Steeves scoring his first career NHL goal on a feed from John Tavares.
Less than a minute later, the Leafs would get another as the puck died on the Hurricanes’ goal line, but Jordan Staal ended up shooting it off of Pyotr Kochetkov’s back and in.
And before the first period even came to a close, Toronto added two more as both David Kampf and John Tavares found open space in the slot for easy tallies.
Defensively, the Hurricanes were a mess. Burns had a really tough game and neither the first nor fourth forward lines covered themselves in glory.
Sebastian Aho also especially had a tough game, just never really looking quite comfortable, and he wound up getting swapped with Jesperi Kotkaniemi in the third period because of it.
Carolina did make it interesting at the end, as they scored three straight in the final eight minutes of the game (Shayne Gostisbehere scored his first goal since Dec. 10, Andrei Svechnikov scored his 18th of the season and Jaccob Slavin made sure his name was still in the spotlight), but two empty netters by the Maple Leafs put the game away.
The Canes will be back in action Tuesday night as the take on the Montreal Canadiens.
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