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hockey night in canada

Maple Leafs goalie Frederik Andersen looks for the puck amid a pile up in his crease in a game between Toronto and the Ottawa last September.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press

If there indeed is a Battle of Ontario – and it's a bit of a stretch to suggest any such thing this NHL season – then there must be a large cat's cradle somewhere around Napanee, the little town that sits exactly half way between the provincial capital and the national capital.

Every time a string is pulled one direction something opposite happens the other direction.

All through the first half of the season, the Toronto Maple Leafs were considered a young team on the rise. In Ottawa, the Senators were seen by Christmas to be an aging team in free fall. One up, one down.

Heading into Saturday's matchup between the two Ontario teams, the high-flying Leafs were suddenly stumbling, their 3-2 overtime loss on Thursday to the Philadelphia Flyers the team's fourth defeat in a row. The 29th-place Senators, on the other hand, had gone 3-1-1 in the five games preceding their mid-way break.

This brief flurry had caused, curiously, some optimism to be found in Ottawa on Thursday afternoon, as general manager Pierre Dorion told the media that he'd seen great progress in January. In his opinion, reaching the final wild-card playoff spot, now 14 points away, was not impossible. Such Pollyanna thinking crashed hard a few hours later as the Senators fell 4-1 to the visiting St. Louis Blues.

So inept are the Senators in second-period play this season that head coach Guy Boucher is calling it a "disease." His team does lead the league, however, in bench penalties, with 11.

Despite three coaches and several iPads on the bench, they can't seem to figure out how to change lines on the fly.

In Toronto, the talk shows were calling for the Leafs coach, Mike Babcock, to tighten up on the young guys, roundly blamed for misplays that led to Flyers comeback and overtime victory.

In Ottawa, callers and some hosts on the sports talk show were calling for the coach's head, saying the time has come to loosen up and give the young guys a chance.

Opposite reactions to the same thing: a loss.

Rather appropriately for this frigid month, both coaches used winter analogies to describe their respective situations. "Let's find a way to dig out," Babcock said. Boucher chose to compare his team, returning from its break, to a car left outside: "When it's cold, it's the same car, but it takes a little while to get going and revving."

"It's never easy to win on the road," Toronto's Tyler Bozak said after Friday's practice in Ottawa. He did not add that, for this year's Senators, it's never easy to win at home.

In Toronto, there was talk of one more veteran piece to help the young stars before the trading deadline of Feb. 26. In Ottawa, the talk was all about trading away old guys such as 32-year-old Dion Phaneuf ($5.5-million, all currency U.S.) or 30-year-old Bobby Ryan ($7.25-million) – that, or else buy them out at the end of this terrible season.

Opposite directions, as per usual.

"Even Wayne Gretzky got traded," Dorion said in response to a question about Ottawa's captain and best player, Erik Karlsson. He was just being glib, but so seriously are some taking the desperate straits of the Senators that, within hours, media in Calgary were talking about the possibility of the Flames making a pitch for Karlsson.

People still call this "the Battle of Ontario," no matter the respective realities. It is a phrase that dates from the years 2000-04, when the two teams met in postseason a remarkable four times and the Leafs won all four rounds.

But the hockey dislike of each other has a much longer history than that. When the original Senators (also known as the "Silver Seven") came back from a 3-1 disadvantage to claim the 1904 Stanley Cup, Toronto players accused Ottawa of salting the ice during the break, thereby slowing down the much quicker players from the provincial capital.

The Senators won their last Stanley Cup the year Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. The Leafs won their last in the year the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. People make more fun of the Leafs' drought than they do of the Senators'.

Perhaps it is because the Senators have long been a precarious proposition – franchise lost to St. Louis in 1934, franchise insecurity again in the air in 2018 – while the Leafs have never had to worry about tickets or fans, however delusional they might become at certain times.

The bad blood is genuine. Toronto fans despised Daniel Alfredsson for hitting Darcy Tucker into the boards in Game 5 of the 2002 Eastern Conference semi-final, stealing the puck and scoring the winning goal that put Ottawa ahead 3-2 in the series and put Tucker on the injury list.

"I'm not trying to become friends with the Toronto fans," Alfredsson said at one point. It hardly needed saying.

In turn, Ottawa fans despised Tucker, Gary Roberts and Tie Domi for the way they manhandled the Senators. The next time the teams met in the playoffs, Tucker tore after Ottawa's Chris Neil, who was sitting on the bench, a brawl ensuing from Tucker's claim that Neil had spit on him. The NHL launched a "spit inquiry" that was unable to turn up a swab.

Then there was the time Alfredsson outraged the Air Canada Centre crowd by pretending to toss his broken stick over the boards, mocking Leafs captain and fellow Swede Mats Sundin, who was serving a one-game suspension for throwing his broken stick over the glass.

Even the crowd Saturday at Canadian Tire Centre will say something about the rivalry. Some Ottawa season-ticket holders won't even go to games where, thanks to ticket prices and seat availability, blue Leafs jerseys seem as ubiquitous as red Senators jerseys. There are sometimes more fights in the stands than on the ice.

The reverse never happens in Toronto, thanks to ticket prices and seat availability.

That's just the way it is and always has been.

As Napanee's most famous citizen, Avril Lavigne, sang in My World, her song about her hometown: "It's always gotta be the same."

The head coach of Canada’s Olympic men’s hockey team, which includes no current NHLers, says the players shared a 'dream' to compete for their country. Willie Desjardins was at the team announcement Wednesday in Calgary.

The Canadian Press

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