Ridly Greig, Morgan Rielly and the play that reignited the Leafs-Senators rivalry

Up and down the visitors’ bench in the Canadian Tire Centre, the Toronto Maple Leafs were incensed. Ridly Greig had just raised his left arm high in the air and, with an exaggerated punctuation, fired a slap shot into an empty net — sealing a victory for the Ottawa Senators and setting in motion a chain of events that would help define both teams’ 2023-24 seasons and reignite a rivalry. Advertisement “I’m not bashing (Greig), he’s a good player, but you can’t do something like that.

They’re out of the playoffs and they’re doing that?” Leafs forward Nick Robertson said recently, recalling Feb. 10, 2024. Morgan Rielly, the longest-serving Leaf, took exception to Greig, skating in his first full NHL season, breaking one of hockey’s unwritten rules.



Greig turned to his left to see the Leafs defenceman’s stick as it connected with his face. Greig hit the ice. Rielly fumed as he was pushed away by two linesmen.

Rielly was suspended for five games. Ridly Greig buries the empty-netter with a slapshot and Morgan Rielly takes exception 😳 pic.twitter.

com/6NISK4AMSt — Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) February 11, 2024 More than a year later, with the first playoff series between the franchises in two decades looming, the incident remains fresh for both teams. “To put it in our face with X amount of games left in the season? Guys weren’t happy with it,” Robertson said. For the Senators, it was a high point in the second half of another season spent outside the playoff picture.

“You know that was my favourite moment of last year, right?” said Michael Andlauer, Ottawa Senators majority owner. “I addressed the players at the end of the year and I told them that. It was more of a statement too, because we had so many Leafs fans in our building.

It was more of a statement to Leafs fans than a statement to the team. I think Ridly was just so happy.” For the Leafs, it was a moment of frustration.

“There’s got to be a message sent,” then-Leaf Ryan Reaves said of Greig’s slap shot two days after it happened. “I don’t think a push is a message, to be honest with you.” The Rielly-Greig tensions will undoubtedly return to the fore with a first-round playoff matchup this season now confirmed.

For much of Rielly’s long career with the Leafs, the Senators have been in a seemingly perpetual rebuild. They missed the playoffs from 2018 to 2024, while the Leafs have reached the postseason for a league-leading ninth consecutive year. Advertisement Over those years, a once-great rivalry became somewhat dormant.

Greig’s controversial slap shot and Rielly’s suspension-worthy cross-check provided a spark for both teams. And it stands to drive some of the intensity and emotion early in a playoff series between franchises that have spent most of the past decade on different paths. The Leafs had been struggling through the beginning of their final game of the 2023-24 season against the Senators.

Frustration had been simmering throughout another poor performance. “Our best people, I thought, let us down,” then-head coach Sheldon Keefe said after the game of the team’s play. The loss meant the Leafs had dropped two of three games and would go 1-3 against a lowly Senators team.

They would wake up the following morning in a wild-card spot, tied with the rebuilding Detroit Red Wings. Well over halfway through the season, the Leafs weren’t where they wanted to be, in the standings or with their effort level. But Rielly’s outward show of emotion provided a spark.

After the loss, the Leafs ripped off seven wins in a row, including against difficult Western Conference teams on the road. “It changed our locker room,” Matthew Knies said of the aftereffects of the cross-check. “It made guys buy in even more.

” For the remainder of the month of February, the Leafs improved in areas that were lacking earlier in the season. “It ignited something in us,” Robertson said. It’s clear there were things said in the immediate aftermath the Leafs would prefer to keep behind closed doors.

But there was an overriding sentiment. “Guys made sure (Rielly) knew he was supported,” Bobby McMann said, with a slight knowing grin. After the season, the Leafs’ roster changed.

But the team’s core and a handful of players lighter on NHL experience remain. It’s these players who have some of the strongest memories of Rielly’s actions. It was an example of defending your team.

Advertisement “Not to say we want to see anyone get injured, but to step up for our pride, it was big,” Knies said of Rielly. While it still might draw some skepticism, the notion of a “code” in the NHL — a set of unwritten rules that dictate how players act on and off the ice — came into play. Greig’s slap shot wouldn’t have warranted a penalty call.

And Rielly is not selling his actions as a revelatory event. “I didn’t feel like anything was changing in me, or anything like that,” Rielly said. “You live with it, you learn on, you move from it.

” But for a Leafs team that often lacked emotion and physicality in their game, Rielly’s actions resonated. “It’s hard to control emotions on the ice sometimes, and you might not know exactly what to do, but you want to do something ,” McMann added. “(Rielly) was the first guy in to do something about it.

The second it happened, it fires everyone else up to be motivated whenever we play (the Senators).” The Leafs have continued playing with bite under Craig Berube. Could emotions from the Rielly-Greig altercation spill over into the first round of the playoffs? “It was definitely a moment I don’t think anyone is going to forget, especially with the series coming up,” Knies said.

New Leafs acquisition Scott Laughton dropped the gloves with Greig in the last meeting between the two teams. Greig’s slapper wasn’t just a shot into an empty net. For the Senators, it was a shot at the thousands of Leafs fans who tend to occupy their arena during games between the two teams — something that’s already a talking point looking ahead to Games 3 and 4 of this coming series.

“It was definitely a defining moment, from what I remember,” Greig said. “I kind of blacked out a little bit. Just a lot of passion in my game.

There was a lot of Leafs fans in the building. I just thought it was a statement.” Advertisement Now it could become a statement with wider implications.

Perhaps playing the role of the pest could serve Greig well as he tries to antagonize the Leafs. Perhaps the strong emotions Greig’s slap shot created could still fuel the Leafs. Of course, neither team should need any more fuel.

The Leafs have advanced beyond the first round just once in the past nine seasons. The Senators are making their first playoff appearance since 2017. In any event, the Greig-Rielly incident is a reminder of the hostility that can exist between the two teams — the most recent evidence of a provincial rivalry that once dominated early-playoff narratives for half a decade.

It was shades of Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson hitting Leafs forward Darcy Tucker from behind before scoring in the 2002 playoffs. Or Alfredsson’s mocking of Leafs captain Mats Sundin by pretending to throw his stick into the crowd in January 2004. Greig and the Senators appear comfortable fulfilling the underdog role this time around.

They have a far younger core without any playoff experience. What will the energy be like to start the series? “We haven’t won against them this year,” Robertson said. “But I’m not worried about that.

We have playoff experience. I know we haven’t had as much success in the first round that we’ve wanted to, but we know what we want to do. They might be very excited, and they’ll have to manage that.

” With all that’s on the line, it shouldn’t take long for some fresh rivalry-fuelling moments to emerge..