The Toronto Maple Leafs Sure Are Doing An Awful Job To "Make Hockey Violent Again"
All we ask for in life is some consistency. If you can make your actions match your words, then at the end of the day that's really all that matters. You can't go around doing one thing but then saying another.
That's where we're at right now with the Toronto Maple Leafs. They need to pick a lane. Are they going to start being the bad boys of hockey, and take guy's heads off their body for scoring on an empty net? Or are they going to have no bite to follow up all those barks?
It all starts last weekend when Morgan Rielly blasted Ridly Greig in the face after this empty net clapper sealed the deal for Ottawa's win over the Leafs.
Clearly the Leafs view themselves as a team that isn't going to sit back and take anything like that. If they need to crosscheck you in the face to get their message across, then that's just some good olde time hockey. A game which used to place a premium on violence. And clearly Ryan Reaves wants to bring that violence back to the game.
Only issue is the very next night, Ryan Reaves ends up getting buried by 5'9" Nathan Walker, so that kind of takes some of the bite out of those words.
Now let's be fair here. Ryan Reaves is getting a little older, and was never really known for being an elite skater. Nathan Walker caught him a little off guard here. But it's still hard to be the "Make Hockey Violent Again" guy while getting buried like that.
And then that brings us to last night. The Toronto Maple Leafs have the big bad Philadelphia Flyers coming into town. A few minutes into the 3rd period, Simon Benoit lays a massive hit on Cam York in the corner. Bad decision to make when Nic Deslauriers is already out there on the ice.
To Benoit's credit, at least he dropped the gloves. Deslauriers is one of the baddest dudes in hockey, and Benoit could have just kept the gloves on and sprinted away if he really wanted to. But even with dropping the gloves, he had absolutely zero intentions on that turning into an actual fight. His goal the moment he got gripped up by Deslauriers was to just stay alive.
So just to recap how the last week of events for the Toronto Maple Leafs: They want to be able to crosscheck players in the head for taking a slap shot on an empty net. They say they want to "make hockey violent again", but then they turtle on the ground the moment they have to answer for a big hit in the corner. The actions just aren't lining up with the words, is all I'm saying.
Flyers lost in OT but the Deslauriers scrap did just enough to get them the regulation point.