‘We don’t lose to those guys’: Tales from the early 2000s Battle of Ontario (2024)

In April of 2000, while a member of the Montreal Canadiens, Shayne Corson watched in envy the first-ever Stanley Cup playoff series between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators. Friends on both teams would later tell him the intensity was unusually high throughout the series between the two provincial rivals.

In the spring of 2001, after signing a free-agent deal with the Leafs the previous summer, Corson got a first-hand taste of the animosity when the two clubs met again in the first round, in the second of what would be four playoff series between them over a five-year span.

“We just didn’t like each other at all,” said Corson.

With the Maple Leafs set to take on the Columbus Blue Jackets Sunday in Game 1 of their play-in series, The Athletic took a look back at the last time Toronto won a playoff series, what made the Battle of Ontario so special, and why the often underdog Maple Leafs always came out on top.

After finishing the regular season as Northeast Division champions and the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference, and having been to the Eastern Conference Final the previous spring, the Maple Leafs were slight favourites entering their 2000 first-round series against Ottawa. The Senators finished the season five points back of the Leafs, good for sixth in the Eastern Conference. Ottawa won the regular-season series, 3-1-1.

Jonas Hoglund, Maple Leafs forward, 1999-2003: We had a team dinner on King Street before the first round, and (then Leafs forward Steve Thomas) stood up in front of the whole team and said, ‘We have a chance to do something great here.’

We believed in ourselves. He said, ‘If we win the Stanley Cup here in Toronto, we will be Gods forever. We will never be forgotten.’

Having been to three conference finals in his career, but never a Stanley Cup Final, the then 35-year-old Thomas knew his opportunities to win a Cup were dwindling.

Hoglund: Every year we had a guy stepping up and that year it was Stumpy (Steve Thomas). He did it all that series (vs. Ottawa).

In Game 2, Thomas scored twice at home in a 5-1 Leafs victory to help give the Leafs a 2-0 series lead. The Senators would even the series at two following a pair of one-goal wins in Ottawa. When the series shifted back to Toronto for Game 5, Thomas scored both Leafs goals in a 2-1 overtime win.

Alyn McCauley, Leafs forward, 1997-2003: (Thomas) had a shoulder injury and he would have (his shoulder) injected before every game. He could barely lift his arm and then he’d get this cortisone shot, or whatever it was, and then you’d see him run into guys. And as a young player you think you know what it takes, but you really don’t. I realized that, ‘Hey, I’ve got a lot of growing and hunger to gain before I can get there.’ You kind of view it as a young player that like, ‘I’m gonna get to the finals. I’m going to have a couple of kicks at the Stanley Cup.’ And in reality, that’s far from the truth.

Darcy Tucker, Leafs forward, 2000-2008: Stumpy (Thomas) wanted to win a Stanley Cup more than any guy I’d ever played with.

Thomas would add his sixth goal of the series in Game 6 as the Leafs beat the Senators 4-2 to close out the series.

Cory Cross, Leafs defenceman, 1999-2002: We all knew how to play in the playoffs. And Ottawa didn’t. All of Ottawa’s guys were guys playing in the playoffs for the first time. We just knew we could wear them down with our physicality.

Perry Pearn, Senators assistant coach, 1996-2004: The thing that we felt was our strength was the tempo of our game. So to play a matchup game, you slow down your tempo. So that was always a bit of a struggle for us to figure out: Are we going to try to match up and keep people like Thomas down? Or are we going to try and keep our tempo? Obviously, our game plan didn’t work out as well as it should have.

In the conference semi-finals, the Leafs lost a six-game series to the eventual Stanley Cup champion New Jersey Devils. The Leafs managed just six shots on goal in New Jersey’s series-clinching, 3-0 win in Game 6.

The 2000-01 regular season was a different story for both Toronto and Ottawa. The Senators, the third-highest scoring team in hockey that year, registered 109 points en route to the Northeast Division title and the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed. The Leafs, despite having added Shayne Corson and Gary Roberts the previous summer, only managed to qualify for the playoffs in the final days of the season. The Leafs finished with 90 points, good enough for the No. 7 seed and a rematch with the now heavily-favoured Senators, who had outscored them 20-10 in sweeping the regular-season series, 5-0.

McCauley: During the regular season playing that team was a nightmare.

Game 1 was a tight affair. It was also the first Stanley Cup playoff game for young Leafs defenceman Bryan McCabe.

Bryan McCabe, Leafs defenceman, 2000-08: I had 17 cups of coffee. I was so jacked up and excited and nervous. I had butterflies in my stomach.

Leafs goalie Curtis Joseph would make 36 saves to steal Game 1 in Ottawa, 1-0 in OT. Captain Mats Sundin scored for Toronto.

McCabe: I went to jump into the pile. My stick hit Mats right in the face between the eyes. He was bleeding everywhere.

Joseph’s performance in Game 1 was the start of one of the most dominant single series performances by a Leafs goaltender in franchise history. He would shut out the Senators again in Game 2, this time making 37 saves in a 3-0 win. The surprising Leafs were suddenly heading back to Toronto up 2-0 in the series, thanks to Joseph.

Rob Zamuner, Senators forward, 1999-2001: Our goalie coach held a half-hour pre-scout meeting on Joseph. He was showing all these saves, and he’s like, ‘Well, you can’t beat him here. You can’t beat them here. You can’t beat them here.’ I remember distinctly after that meeting a bunch of us being like, kind of half sarcastically, ‘Well, are we gonna score?’ It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Pearn: If you start talking about it too much, then the sticks get squeezed even tighter. When you’re playing a really good goalie who has had playoff success, you start trying to make the perfect shot instead of just taking the shot you should. And that split second that you wait gives a really good goalie the time he needs to be in the exact right position.

Jason York, Senators defenceman, 1996-2001: I think (Joseph) might have gotten in our heads. Dominik Hasek was kind of like that. As a shooter, you think you have to be perfect.

McCabe: (Joseph) never seemed to let the nerves get to him. It seemed like the same person whether it was Game 26 or Game 7 of a playoff round.

The Leafs would win Game 3, 3-2 in overtime, this time thanks to an unlikely hero: defenceman Cory Cross with his first-ever playoff goal.

Cross: After the goal, I got clotheslined by Bryan McCabe while we were celebrating. I was at the bottom of the dogpile. I just turtled underneath everybody. After I got up, I could finally show some emotion. When I went back out for the three stars of the game, I felt like I should’ve taken a victory lap.

Tucker: When Crosser scored that goal, we started to feel really good about ourselves.

Cross: The next day I was walking down Avenue Road by my house and some guy is hanging out his car, yelling my name. It was cool to be the King of Toronto for a day I guess, eh?

One of the keys to Toronto’s success through the first three games was Corson, who coach Pat Quinn had instructed to shadow Senators star centre Alexei Yashin. The 27-year-old Russian had scored 40-goals during the regular season. But with Corson on his tail, Yashin managed just one assist through the first three games of the series.

Cross: Pat said that was all Corson was to do: just skate around with Yashin and stay on him like glue. He never got a sniff that whole series.

Shayne Corson, Leafs forward, 2000-03: I took it as a compliment and as a challenge. I was near the end of my career. Your roles change as you get older. Anytime your coach comes to you and asks you to play a different role, you have to buy-in to that role.

York: You could tell (Yashin) was frustrated. It was pretty tough to win when your best players aren’t your best players.

Pearn: (Yashin) was very confident. A buy-in to changing on the fly and trying to get away from Corson wasn’t something I don’t think was in his DNA at that time and that he really believed in. He’d been successful his whole career to that point. Trying to convince him that in the playoffs, you have to do things a bit differently, and in fairness to him he’s a very confident guy, it would be hard sell. I don’t think we did as good a job trying to get him away from Corson as we might have been able to.

Corson: That’s one thing about that (Leafs) team: everyone was willing to do whatever they were asked to do to win.

McCauley: When we got to the playoffs, it just seemed like we really focused in on what the job was. It didn’t matter who scored or the significance of your role or ice time. It was just: this is what we need to do to win. Corson and Tucker and Travis Green were excellent at buying into the team and shutting down their team’s top unit. They also had a little bit of nasty in them. And that was one thing that Ottawa just didn’t seem to have.

The Leafs would complete the sweep with a 3-1 win at home in Game 4. Joseph finished the series with a .975 save percentage. It was just the third, and most-recent, seven-game series sweep in Leafs history.

Zamuner: I think we were more talented than (Toronto). But they had experience and grit and they knew how to win. They just played us better in the trenches.

McCauley: I would go outside after games and see people in a traffic jam, but nobody cared. They’re all honking their horns and high-fiving each other. There’s this chaos on the streets, but everybody’s jubilant and enjoying themselves. Somebody would spot me out of a car and a few people would come running over to high five, get a couple of pictures, or whatever it may be.

It was a fun moment.

McCabe:Every year we played them, on paper, they were most likely the favourite. But we were their kryptonite.

In 2002, for the third spring running, the Leafs and Senators met in the Stanley Cup playoffs, but this time in Round 2.

Just six points separated the two clubs during the regular season, with the Leafs finishing fourth in the conference with 100 points, and the Senators seventh with 94. Once again, the Senators had won the regular-season series (4-1), but there were still questions about whether the offensively-gifted Senators could beat the veteran, gritty Leafs in a playoff series.

Pearn: As a coaching staff you can’t help but think ‘OK, some of our players have heard this.’ How much they believe it, that’s another question, but we’re not getting away from it. We know that we’re under the gun in terms of you know what the media is saying about us playing against Toronto. I think that was always a factor.

The Leafs entered the series after prevailing in an intense, physical seven-game series against the New York Islanders in Round 1. Cross called the Islanders series a “kill or be killed series.” Many Leafs were injured for the start of the Ottawa series, including Sundin, who had fractured his wrist. The Senators came flying out of the gates in Game 1 with a convincing 5-0 win in Toronto, setting up a pivotal Game 2 on a Saturday night.

Garry Valk, Leafs forward, 1998-2002: If Ottawa weren’t going to beat us that year, they were never going to beat us.

Tucker: In that series, the Battle of Ontario really became a battle for the first time.

The Leafs entered the first intermission of Game 2 with a 2-0 lead. But at the end of regulation, the two teams were tied 2-2. Two periods of overtime resolved nothing. Less than five minutes into triple-OT, after the Leafs won a face-off in the Ottawa zone, the puck found its way onto the stick of Gary Roberts with a clear path to an unprepared Senators goalie Patrick Lalime.

Tucker: If Roberts doesn’t score that goal in triple OT, I don’t believe we win the series.

From that point on, Roberts, paired with McCauley on the Leafs top line with Sundin out, emerged into an offensive force for Toronto, leading the team with five goals and 10 points in the series.

Corson: Robs is Robs. He’s going to come to the rink and give you everything he has. He’s going to go 120 percent. He doesn’t know any different.

Valk: Ottawa never had a Gary Roberts. He didn’t even know who he was playing with from shift-to-shift. It didn’t matter.

Hoglund: Especially when the playoffs started we really got on the Gary Roberts train with the nutrition and cool down after practices and working out before the practices. I think (Roberts’ focus on nutrition) works. Maybe not for everybody, but you really have to believe it to have it work. And he tried to get people on different supplements, vitamins and all that. He came in with shakes in the morning. He stood by the blender and handed out shakes to everybody that wanted one.

McCabe: I definitely reaped the benefits of Gary Roberts’ tutelage. Previous to getting traded there, I thought I was working hard and doing the right things off the ice, but I wasn’t even close.

Cross: When Gary got a hold of (McCabe), he wasn’t in the gym too much. But it was so easy to see the transformation that Bryan made and what a long career he had because of how he just followed what (Roberts) was doing.

In Game 4, with the Leafs now down 2-1 in the series, McCauley, who had zero points in 15 playoff games prior to 2002, scored both goals in a 2-1 win.

McCauley: The previous playoffs I was just kind of a penalty killer mainly on the fourth line. But I was like, ‘You know what? I’ve seen all these teams where guys step up, they score goals and they contribute even just a few points here and there.’ So I just tried to be ready.

Nathan Dempsey, Leafs defenceman, 1996-2002: Being a Black Ace, we saw the dedication of the group. I’ve never played on a team that had that kind of group in the way they cared about each other. They were willing to take on roles that maybe they felt they weren’t supposed to be given. You had guys understand that you have to go out of your comfort zone a little bit to be successful.

McCauley: I played in Ottawa for four years in junior and my hometown is Gananoque, which is now one hour and 15 minutes from (Canadian Tire Centre). There were a number of family friends that were in the arena. The local area code in Gananoque was 382. A busload of locals came up from Gananoque and two guys spray-painted “Fear 382,” implying that they should fear me on the ice, even though that wasn’t my game.

The series returned to Toronto for Game 5, and what would become one of the most infamous moments in Leafs playoff history. With just over two minutes remaining and the score tied 2-2, Tucker went to the boards to chase after a loose puck. With his back turned to the play, Senators centre Daniel Alfredsson levelled Tucker, sending him into the boards, shoulder-first.

The play continued without a penalty and Alfredsson scored what would be the eventual game-winner.

Tucker: The goal hurt more than my shoulder.

Valk: Good on Alfredsson, because it was the first time they showed some pushback. And Tucker is the type of guy who would do that for us.

Hoglund: The worst thing you can do in the playoffs is to focus on the wrong things. You want to focus on what you can control. You can’t control what the media says. You can’t control what the refs are doing. When stuff like this happens, it’s good that you have experience in the team because if you’re a young, inexperienced team, you can let the wrong things go to your head.

Valk: But once again, we’re not going to retaliate. We’re better than them. It’s the Ottawa Senators. We kind of looked down on them. We were the Toronto Maple Leafs. We don’t lose to those guys.

Tucker: Pat (Quinn) came in before his press conference to check and see if I was OK. I was about to go to the hospital. Pat, besides Thomas, was the guy who I wished could win a Stanley Cup. I felt just as sick for him as I did for anyone else. Once he found out the news that I probably wouldn’t be able to come back for the rest of the playoffs, even though I did come back for the Carolina series, he could see the disappointment in my face. I could feel the disappointment in his voice.

As a result, more players received unexpected opportunities, such as Dempsey, who had played just three regular-season games with the Leafs, having spent the majority of his season with the St. John’s Maple Leafs.

Joe Bowen, Maple Leafs radio play-by-play voice: All of the guys from the AHL team that had been filling in, we were all in the hotel lobby with them. (Dempsey) said to me, ‘Do you get your name on the Stanley Cup if you don’t play in the Final?’ They had guys playing so well that had so little NHL experience.

Dempsey: (Sundin) and all the veterans would always take the time to come say hello. And then when we got into the lineup, that put us at ease.

The series shifted to Ottawa for Game 6. With the Leafs facing elimination, the Senators jumped out to an early two-goal lead in the third period.

Valk: We just had a strut. We weren’t going to be denied. It didn’t matter what the score in the game was, or in the series. We didn’t fear Ottawa and they probably had a better team than us on paper. We just weren’t intimidated by them. The strut came from Pat Quinn and his experience.

Power-play goals from McCabe and Roberts allowed the Leafs to tie the game at two before the end of the first. An Alex Mogilny goal at 4:28 of the third snapped a 3-3 tie. From there, the battered and tired Leafs would hang on for 4-3 win. In the Leafs dressing room as the final seconds ticked off the clock, Tucker and Sundin were listening to Bowen’s now iconic radio call.

Tucker: Ottawa was putting everything they had at us. When (Bowen) yelled out ‘Bless you boys,’ that will always stick in my mind. I was in the locker room and jumping up and down with Mats. We were in awe of the performance as a group.

Bowen: I have no idea why I said it. I don’t write things down to rehearse to say, ‘Oh, I hope I can work this in somewhere.’ But it was like the last stand. It was a team that was beaten up, bruised, outgunned, outmanned, and yet here they were hanging on by their thumbs, doing everything that they could to preserve a one-goal lead. It was heroic. I don’t know why I blurted that out. But I do know when I got back to Toronto, (then Leafs president) Ken Dryden had resurrected it, and it was played to the house for the next game, and it got quite a response there too. I was so proud of them for what they were doing in order to fend off, really, a better hockey team.

Corson: That’s something as a team we talked about before that series started: We wanted to take a deep run and try to win a Stanley Cup and to do that, you had to sacrifice your body. And everybody was willing to do that.

Bowen didn’t know it at the time, but his three sons might have contributed to the win in their own way.

Bowen: We’d driven down for the game in Ottawa, my three oldest boys, Liam, Derek, and Shawn. In the game, the Leafs are trailing. Shawn goes to the washroom and the Leafs score. When he came back, they told him to go back to the washroom again. And he did. And they scored again.

So now they won’t let him in to watch the game.

They send him back to start the third period and the Leafs score the winning goal. Everybody’s celebrating and Shawn hasn’t seen all three of the goals. Everybody has their own little superstitions.

Back in Toronto, a confident Leafs squad easily dispatched Ottawa 3-0 in Game 7 to advance to the Eastern Conference final for the second time in four years.

Valk: Would it have meant a lot for us to beat them? One hundred percent. But it almost felt like it (would have) meant more to them. Kind of like the younger brother trying to beat up the older brother, right? It was like Ottawa couldn’t win the ugly ones. They had to be perfect to beat us.

Many Leafs of the late ’90s and early 2000s teams believe the 2002 club was the best equipped to win a Stanley Cup. But despite the return of Mats Sundin for the series, the Leafs would fall to the Carolina Hurricanes in the East Final in six games.

Corson: I feel, to this day, that if we didn’t run into injuries, we would’ve had a good chance of winning it all.

Hoglund: Maybe one thing that could have halted us a little bit, we started to believe too much. We looked too far ahead of ourselves.

Tucker: That’s the one thing that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth: that you won’t get your family name engraved on the Stanley Cup.

Two years later, the two teams — separated by a single point during the regular season — would meet for the fourth and most recent time. The Leafs, who were now featuring Battle of Ontario debutants such as Joe Nieuwendyk, Ron Francis, and Brian Leetch, had finished the regular season with 103 points, good enough for the No. 4 seed in the East.

But no player had altered the Leafs more in the previous two seasons than goaltender Ed Belfour, who had signed with the team in the summer of 2002.

The Leafs had won the regular-season series, 4-1-1.

Bowen: (Joseph and Belfour were) totally opposite. Curtis was always outgoing. He didn’t mind chatting on game day. He always had a smile on his face. Eddie arrived with a sour scorn on his mug. You didn’t go near him.

After losing Game 1, a spectacular Belfour shut out the Senators in Games 2 and 3, and then again in Game 5. The Leafs now had a chance to close out the series in Ottawa in Game 6.

McCabe: Eddie wanted fresh orange juice between every period sitting in his locker. He had a routine and he had to stick to his routine. We’re in Ottawa (for Game 6). Matt Nichol had went to Whole Foods during the day to get the orange juice (but) he ran out of (it) because we went to overtime. He didn’t plan for double overtime, so he had to go to the concessions. (He gets) a can of Five Alive and he poured it for Eddie, hoping he wouldn’t notice. Eddie had like one sip of the juice going into the second overtime and threw it on the ground and snapped and was like ‘What is this crap?’ He was a funny guy, but I’ll tell you what, he was so competitive. I don’t think I’ve ever played with a guy that wanted to win more than him.

The Leafs would lose Game 6 when Mike Fisher scored 1:47 into double overtime, setting up another Game 7 in Toronto.

Ahead of Game 7, the Leafs were calm. Their poise came from the top and Quinn’s even-keeled approach.

Valk: Ottawa had a bit more of a fiery coach. I just sensed that we had a calm about us. And they had a panic about them.

Tucker: (Quinn) usually wasn’t really vocal after the game. During the game, that was a different story. But after the game, he just got his cigar lit, had a glass of red wine, and started worrying about the next game.

McCabe: Pat might not have been the best technical coach that ever lived. But he was a great human being. He was a player’s coach and he was a motivator. Some of the speeches he would give before a playoff game, the hairs on the back of your neck would stand up. He was very well-spoken and he had a presence obviously being a big man. (Quinn) had a lot of stories that were related to books and wars. He knew when to use it, and his timing and his delivery… and the urgency in his voice and the presence he had, it just really made the group believe in each other.

Valk: (Quinn) wasn’t more about systems. He was more about heart.

York: Pat Quinn was always so good with the media and playing gamesmanship. Our team was quieter and had a “turn the other cheek” mentality. They were more brash. Both teams didn’t like each other, that’s for sure. He was doing things to create a distraction. But it’s funny behind the scenes. We would just laugh and say, ‘Here he goes again.’

Cross: I always thought we should’ve been a little more structured in our game. You look at a team like New Jersey, the trap they played, the structure they had. Pat was more of a ‘Drop the puck, just go and play.’ I didn’t appreciate that until I got into coaching and it sunk in: This is why he let us play like this. This is a fun way to play. It was about reading, reacting, and using skill to win games.

Tucker: I remember bringing my sons to the rink and Pat would sit on the couch with my sons, watching cartoons of all things. He was such a good man to people around our group.

Valk: We don’t win those series without Pat Quinn. We don’t.

Game 7 in 2004 is perhaps best remembered for Nieuwendyk’s two goals on shots, both from near-identical spots on the ice, on Lalime.

Pearn: I don’t think (Nieuwendyk) is shooting it thinking it’s going in. But if you take that shot, it can. That was one of those things in the Toronto series sometimes that maybe we didn’t do enough of, is taking those shots.

McCabe: I can’t say we’re expecting that, to get a gift from God.

Tucker: Joe had a muffin shot with that old, wooden stick. I don’t know how they were going in.

Pearn: You look back and you think, ‘With really elite goaltending, would we have done a little bit better?’ And that’s just a question. Maybe we wouldn’t have. But you at least ask yourself that question.

The Leafs would win Game 7 by a 4-1 score. They then fell to the Philadelphia Flyers in six games in the Eastern Conference semi-final. The following season would be cancelled due to the lockout. The Leafs wouldn’t return to the playoffs again until 2013.

The 2004 series win over Ottawa remains the last playoff series win for the Leafs. Regardless of how deep into the playoffs the Leafs advance this year, the teams that prevailed in the Battle of Ontario in the early 2000s will remain among the most adored in club history.

Jason Spezza, Senators forward, 2002-14: (The rivalry) was something we had a lot of fun with, to be honest. The two Ontario teams, and the battles, the Toronto fans being in our arena, I caught the tail end of Toronto beating Ottawa in the playoff series, but after that, we had a bit of our way with the Leafs in the regular season.

Pearn: Those Toronto series were kind of the start of the Melnyk era in Ottawa. I just remember the reaction of (former Senators owner) Rod Bryden after we lost (in 2001). It was a cold day and we’re getting on the plane and Rod was on the tarmac standing in the cold and he shook every player’s hand, every coach and manager’s hand as they got on the plane. And I guess what I’m trying to say is that wasn’t the reaction of the owner in the (2004) series.

Tucker: I came home after a game and there were 10 people waiting on my front lawn chanting ‘Go Leafs Go.’ It was a crazy time to be a Leaf, but also a fan of the Maple Leafs. I don’t think many people remember those aspects of that time, but we players do, for sure. Playoff time is a different animal than the regular season.

McCabe: (It was) a group of guys that legitimately cared about one another and had the same goals in mind. Everyone was pulling on the rope the same way. All the egos were left at the door. I truly believe that even in this day and age that there has to be that camaraderie and chemistry and culture. You don’t have to love everyone in the locker room and be best friends with them. But you have to appreciate and respect what they bring to the table. That’s why we had success.

(Top photo: Dave Sandford / Getty Images)