‘Natural intensity’ with teams meeting in postseason for first time since 2004
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TORONTO — The 270-mile trip from Toronto to Ottawa is a simple, four-hour journey through the guts of southern Ontario, one that takes you east along the shore of Lake Ontario before veering north through farmland to the capital of Canada.
The trip, weather permitting, is usually pleasant.
Unlike the relationship between these cities and their beloved NHL teams.
Toronto, Canada’s largest city with its glitzy skyscrapers, is like an older sibling, carrying a sliver of perceived aloofness and entitlement.
Ottawa, home to the Parliament of Canada, is like the younger brother, tired of seemingly being overlooked and not receiving the respect it feels is due.
This tale of two cities is reflected by their respective hockey teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators. Both the teams and their fans don’t like each other.
With the teams poised to face each other in the postseason for the first time in more than two decades, that hasn’t changed. Just ask Maple Leafs goalie Anthony Stolarz.
“Going to be a little bit of a war,” he said. “So we’ll be ready.”
That about says it all.
Welcome to the Battle of Ontario, where history shows the wild, the weird and the wacky can bust out at any time on the ice, in the stands or outside the arena, all woven together with the common thread of animosity.
“The hate for the Leafs, well, it took years to get over it,” RDS broadcaster Patrick Lalime, who experienced the Battle of Ontario as a goalie with the Senators from 1999-2004, told NHL.com. “When you put on that Ottawa jersey, you just don’t like Toronto. And you certainly don’t like their fans, especially when they try to take over your building.
“Even now, you feel it.”
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From an Ottawa perspective, that has always been an issue dating back to the first postseason matchup between the two franchises in 2000. At that time, radio spots on one of the local stations, acknowledging the number of Toronto fans that would jam into the Senators’ arena whenever the Maple Leafs visited, urged fans to “Leave your blue and white at home. You live in Ottawa. Not Toronto.”
Daniel Alfredsson, now an assistant with the Senators, was their captain at the time and remembers telling the media before one of Ottawa’s home games in that series that “we have to score first to take the crowd out of the game.”
That series kicked off a span in which the Maple Leafs and Senators met in the playoffs four times in five years (2000-2004). The fact that Toronto won all four series, with its supporters invading Ottawa in each of them, only irked Senators fans even more.
To that end, in March of 2004, the Ottawa City Council voted unanimously in favor of banning Maple Leafs jerseys from the arena, known then as Corel Centre.
“The Senators have been an integral part of the economy in Ottawa, and our civic branding, and it’s offensive to [have] a bunch of people walking around with Toronto Maple Leaf jerseys when civic pride is on the line,” Councillor Rick Chiarelli said at the time.
In the end, Toronto jerseys were allowed in the building, but those wearing them were encouraged to donate to the local food bank.
Twenty-one years later, Senators owner Michael Andlauer, who has done an outstanding job reviving the franchise and its relationship with the community, is confident that his team will have much better support for home games in the upcoming Eastern Conference First Round series, which starts in Toronto on Sunday (7 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, ESPN2).
Single-game tickets for the Senators’ home games went on sale Thursday. Prior to that, each Ottawa season ticket holder was allowed to purchase two additional seats. As such, Andlauer said he doesn’t expect to see much blue in the stands when the series shifts to Canadian Tire Centre for Games 3 and 4.
“Frankly, our players don’t like to have all these (enemy) fans in the building, and I don’t like it,” Andlauer said this week. “With more season tickets, we will outnumber those fans and drown out the noise.”
Andlauer gleefully pointed out an incident from the 2023-24 season that ignited a mass exodus of Toronto fans from Ottawa’s rink.
On Feb. 10, 2024, the host Senators were leading the visiting Maple Leafs 4-3 when Ottawa forward Ridly Greig put an exclamation mark on the win by drilling a slap shot into an empty net with the Toronto goalie pulled for a sixth attacker in the game’s final seconds. Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly took exception and cross-checked Greig in the head and was given a five-game suspension.
“You know that was my favorite play of the year, right?” Andlauer said. “I addressed the players at the end of the year and I told them that. It was more of a statement too, because we had so many Leafs fans in our building. It was more a statement to Leaf fans than it was a statement to the team.
“I think Ridly was so happy.”
At the time, Rielly wasn’t. More than a year later, however, he’s taking the high road on the whole thing, although he admits emotions will be high.
“I think it’s just kind of natural intensity just because it’s the playoffs,” he said. “There’s more at stake.”
Maple Leafs forward Max Domi was more graphic with his comments about the upcoming series. His dad, Tie Domi, played in the four previous Battle of Ontario playoff series as a forward with Toronto.
“It’s going to be an absolute war,” Max said.
* * * *
Ask Maple Leafs forward John Tavares about his lasting memories of the previous Battle of Ontario playoff matchups, and one moment comes to mind.
“‘Cujo’ taking out the referee,” he said with a smile.
Tavares was referring to an incident in Game 3 of the 2000 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals.
Ottawa forward Rob Zamuner had just scored to put the Senators up 4-2, and Maple Leafs goalie Curtis Joseph — nicknamed Cujo — bolted after referee Mick McGeough, feeling he’d been interfered with on the play. To the shock of all in attendance, Joseph lost his balance and took out the official.
Tavares, who at the time was a 9-year-old growing up in Oakville, Ontario, 30 miles west of Toronto, recalls the play to this day. So, too, does Joseph.
When it comes to the Battle of Ontario, Joseph said, expect anything.
“It’s so great that the rivalry is going to be revived,” Joseph told NHL.com. “We lived and died in those series. There are so many great memories.”
The McGeough incident is one of the exceptions. At least for him.
“I thought I was interfered with,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t like the horn in that arena, I didn’t like their team. And I didn’t play that well in that game. We didn’t play well as a team also. So you know that your frustration boils over. It was extreme, but I just wanted to get to him and argue the point before he got to the penalty box, hoping he’d change his mind, which you know, was not going to happen. It was 4-2 for them, I think, at that point.
“But if you see the replay, I’m clearly inside the net. I slipped. The outer edge of my skate probably had lost it from hitting the goal post. You never cross over, really, during the course of the game. You’re usually on your inside edge. I went to the outside of my right foot and slipped.”
Joseph, who received a 10-minute misconduct, had a subsequent call from the NHL but did not receive any disciplinary punishment, much to the chagrin of the Senators and their fans.
“The mayor of Ottawa at the time, I forget his name, I remember he wanted me suspended,” Joseph recalled.
He wasn’t the only one, as Joseph found out the following morning. At 5 a.m., he was woken up by someone from an Ottawa radio station standing across the street from the Maple Leafs’ hotel, yelling through a bullhorn about the alleged atrocity Joseph had committed against McGeough.
“I was being told, ‘Leave the referees alone, Cujo!’ They were really giving it to me,” he said. “I had to go downstairs and change rooms. They put me on the other side of the building, but I was already up.
“It was terrible.”
Others also felt the wrath of the fine citizens of Ottawa during the Battles of Ontario of that era.
Maple Leafs forward Darcy Tucker was one of the top pests in the NHL at that time. During a regular-season game in Ottawa on March 4, 2003, then-Maple Leafs forward Travis Green, who was upset at an earlier check he’d been the recipient of, pointed at Senators pugilist Chris Neil sitting on the Ottawa bench (the same bench Green, now the Senators coach, today calls home).
Tucker immediately raced over and began throwing punches at Neil and others on the Ottawa bench. He would be suspended for five games.
Ottawa radio responded by playing an edited song to the tune of Blink-182’s “All the Small Things.” The lyrics had been altered to reflect the city’s feelings regarding Tucker in profane fashion.
Just another chapter in a rivalry filled with heroes and villains.
For his part, Tucker said he still gets stopped by people who remember those series to this day.
“Just the memories for them,” he said Thursday. “A lot of kids that were going to university at that time across Ontario, across Canada that were watching in their dorms or watching it at their local pub in town, and they’re grown adults now. Some of them are doctors, some of them are lawyers and things of that nature. And to have that core memory for them, I think is pretty special. And I think it comes from both sides — both kids that were fans of Ottawa and kids that were fans of Toronto.”
Tucker rejected the notion that those series were nasty.
“I don’t know if it was that nasty, to be honest with you — nasty for maybe the game today,” he said. “I don’t think at that particular point it was overly that bad. There was obviously intensity and pride and things of that nature, and wanting to win.
“But I don’t think it was overly that nasty. I think was just pretty intense.”
Which is a trait the upcoming Battle of Ontario is expected to have.
* * * *
It was the final Saturday of the 2024-25 regular season, and Lalime, a broadcaster who covers the Montreal Canadiens, was sitting in the Scotiabank Arena seats in Toronto watching highly touted Canadiens prospect Ivan Demidov participate in the optional morning skate.
Suddenly he pointed at the crease in the west end of the arena and chuckled, partially in jest, partially in agony.
“Right there is where I became the mayor of Toronto,” he said sarcastically.
The last time the Maple Leafs and Senators faced each other in the playoffs was Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals on April 20, 2004. Toronto won the game 4-1, thanks in part to two first-period goals from forward Joe Nieuwendyk that squeezed through the five-hole of Lalime. To this day Lalime, who was pulled for the start of the second period with Toronto up 3-0, knows he should have stopped both.
“You ask yourself what you could have done differently,” he said. “It took years to get over it. You want to do so well for your teammates. Time helps. But you don’t completely forget, especially since it came against the Maple Leafs, the team we wanted to beat so bad.”
For many, the two Nieuwendyk goals he gave up have made Lalime a part of Battle of Ontario lore, which he understands.
“That comes hand in hand with this rivalry,” he said. “And that’s why it’s great that they’re playing again in the playoffs 21 years later. It’s emotional. It’s intense. It’s competitive.
“It’s the Battle of Ontario. It’s supposed to be all those things.”
Chances are, it’s about to be all those things again.
