Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images
It was hard not to be excited for the latest installment of the Battle of Ontario in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs due to the amount of bad blood between the Maple Leafs and the Senators. Ottawa’s Ridly Grieg entered the series with a target on his back, and Auston Matthews sent a message with the wildly disrespectful move he pulled out during the first game.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are both the most popular hockey team in the province of Ontario and Canada as a whole, but in 1992, they got some competition when the Senators set up shop in the nation’s capital to bring an NHL franchise back to Ottawa for the first time since the 1930s.
The Canadiens and Bruins still remain Toronto’s primary rivals, but the Senators have also managed to carve out some space for themselves.
That distinction is primarily due to the geographic proximity between the two teams (games featuring both squads are referred to as “The Battle of Ontario),” and while the Senators currently have the edge in the win column as far as all-time matchups are concerned, the Maple Leafs had prevailed in all four of the playoffs series they’d faced off in heading into the current NHL season.
The Battle of Ontario was also responsible for one of the spiciest moments of the 2023-24 campaign courtesy of Senators center Ridly Grieg, who emphatically capped off a 5-3 win in February by ripping a slapshot into an empty net before eating a cross-check from Morgan Rielly, who was suspended for five games for the dirty move that sparked a melee.
Rielly may have been objectively in the wrong for his absurd overreaction to the supposed violation of one of hockey’s “unwritten rules,” but that hasn’t prevented the Maple Leafs and their fans from holding a grudge against Grieg since the showdown.
On Sunday, the two teams kicked off their first playoff series since 2004 in a game where the Maple Leafs earned a 6-2 victory, and Grieg left Scotiabank Arena with one less stick than he had when he arrived courtesy of Auston Matthews, who was captured grabbing the twig that ended up in the Toronto bench before going out of his way to forcefully snap it over the boards.
Auston Matthews snapped Ridly Greig’s stick after it got pulled into the Leafs’ bench during Game 1 😲 pic.twitter.com/fzmy66aTrc
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 22, 2025
The Maple Leafs pulled out to a 2-0 lead in the series with a 3-2 win on Tuesday night, although we’ll have to wait and see if they’ll be able to avoid what would be their seventh first-round exit in their last eight playoff appearances if the Senators can pull off the comeback.