Carolina defeats Toronto in homecoming game

Tonight's game against the Toronto Maple Leafs had the makings of being one of those old fashioned, high scoring run-and-gun style contests where the winner would be determined by who had the last shot on net. The Hurricanes, who haven't been good defensively this year, were missing two top-four defensemen in Joni Pitkanen and Tim Gleason while the Leafs have injuries all across the board and are currently icing two AHL-ers in their top-four. It ended up being somewhat of a low-scoring affair with the Hurricanes putting together one of their best defensive efforts of the season. The Canes gave up only 18 shots at even strength and 23 overall, which is pretty amazing when you consider who they were dressing in their defense corps. They managed to do this by employing the same strategy as they had in the New Jersey game, which was forecheck hard, force turnovers and trap the Leafs in their own zone for most of the game. I thought it would be difficult for the Canes to do t...