Canes can’t hold on in Toronto, fall to Leafs in overtime

One point is good, but two would have been better.

That’s pretty much all you can say about the results from Monday night’s game after the Carolina Hurricanes fell in overtime to the Toronto Maple Leafs in their first game since the All-Star break.

The Canes dominated the majority of the game at even-strength, with most of the lines easily outchancing their Leaf counterparts, but it’s hard to find success when the special teams battle is so lopsided.

The Maple Leafs had four power play opportunities — scoring on one of them— while the Hurricanes had just one chance for about 11 seconds.

It seemed like a blatantly lopsided affair, with multiple calls that could have easily gone the other way, but despite that, Carolina had their chances and just couldn’t capitalize on enough of them.

The Hurricanes got on the board first as Ian Cole hit a streaking Nino Niederreiter with a cross-ice pass for an easy redirect goal.

The Maple Leafs tied things up on the power play on a fortunate bounce after a net-front tip by John Tavares hit William Nylander in the thigh and dropped right behind Frederik Andersen for the tuck in — which was actually tapped in by Auston Matthews just before it crossed the line.

Then, soon after, in the final minute of play in the second period, Matthews wired one home for his second goal of the night. It was a set play off a faceoff win with the chance culminating once Vincent Trocheck lost track of Matthews.

But the Canes didn’t falter and off the opening draw at the start of the third period, Tony DeAngelo burst across the offensive blueline and whipped it past former Carolina netminder Petr Mrazek.

Then halfway through the period, the Hurricanes came through again off of broken play. Originally intending to dump the puck in for a change, the puck took a fortunate hop into the air where the Toronto defenseman lost sight of it. This allowed the Canes to regain possession and it ended with Derek Stepan banging home a loose puck.

Toronto mounted a hard push from there and after the Canes failed to clear the zone, Mitch Marner was left all alone in front of Andersen and he was able to easily put back a rebound to tie the game.

Regulation couldn’t decide a winner so the teams went to overtime and Marner capped off the game after Andersen mishandled the puck under him.

The Hurricanes will stay in Canada as they travel to Ottawa to face the Senators for the second half of a back-to-back on Tuesday at 7 p.m.