Maple Leafs vs. Senators:The Battle of Ontario Will Be Alive and Well After 2008

It's games like last night's that make me wish the Sens were still number one and the Leafs were battling for that eighth playoff spot.

It's games like last night's where I'm left wondering how the outcome would have changed if both teams had full, healthy rosters.

It's games like last night's that make me realize how much you actually miss when you don't buy in to the corporate scam that is Leafs TV.

It's games like last night's that make you yearn for the olden days, because that's just what it was—a throwback.

Sure it was 8-2 for the Sens and V-Tosk's new f***ing hair cut didn't do us any good, but it was one hell of a game. 

Whenever the Ottawa Senators play the Toronto Maple Leafs it's never boring, usually because of our predisposition as fans on either side is to think, "These guys are our rivals. It's going to be a great game."

The game could end up being an 8-7 shootout win for either side, with a big hit each minute, or a 1-0 snoozer with one "normal" hit being thrown and seven shots combined between the two teams, and we'd all still walk away buzzing. 

But where has it been the past few years (namely post-lockout)? Sure, the disparities in the games have gotten closer—Toronto won a single game against the Sens in 2005/06, three the following year, and this season they broke even (four wins and four losses), but over the past few years the games have become like any other normal game.

Maybe it was because the two hadn't faced each other in the playoffs in so long, that there was no retribution for a late April exit, or they weren't meeting when the games really mattered.

Last night we may have found our intensity, and all it took was a desperate Senators' team and a Leafs team that isn't concerned with wins and losses anymore, and can just worry about playing the games.

There were goals (albeit they were all for Ottawa), hitting, and fighting. There was an electricity in the air at puck drop that implied that this was a real game with real implications, not some tame November date.

The Leafs had an opportunity to under-cut the Senators so they could join the Leafs on the links for the first time ever.

Granted, they came out flat and it wasn't the most impressive game on their part, but the Leafs proved there's still a little grit on those wheels—something that has seemed to be missing from this team for a few years.

Mark Bell, who's rightfully serving time in prison this summer for a drunken hit-and-run, absolutely decked Daniel Alfredsson—which brought the rivalry back from the "my team is better than your team" message boards stage and back into the "if I ever run into a Sens/Leafs fan in a train station I'll fight them" stage.

The Leafs fans cheered while Sens fans were left to call us despicable, low-down, dirty, rotten, cheap, and heartless.

Which brought on the Leafs fans rebuttal of, "Now you know how it tastes," as they've been victim of Alfie's shenanigans for years now (Although Sens fans are/were subject to Darcy Tucker—Man do I love rivalries!).

I won't lie—I enjoyed the hit, and I enjoyed who it was on. I didn't enjoy (like so many others have) the fact that it knocked Alfredsson out of the game or the feeling I've got in the pit of my stomach that Mark Bell—clean hit or not—may not be out of the woods yet (with regards to the NHL that is).

All I know is that whether he's still on the Leafs' roster next year or not, the Battle of Ontario may reach a whole new level.

It's almost enough for me to not pray for the buy-outs of Darcy Tucker (who told Dany Heatley to "watch his knees" when the two were in the penalty box) and Bryan McCabe, (who fought seemingly for the first time since Zdeno Chara used him as a rag-doll a few years ago) this summer.

Almost.