TORONTO — For more than two decades since the Battle of Ontario was last played, Patrick Lalime has had to sit with the two Joe Nieuwendyk goals he believes effectively ended his time with the Ottawa Senators.
Lalime was involved in all four of the memorable series between the Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs, played over a five-year period, going down as the losing goaltender in the last three of them.
To this day, he can recite the details of how they went down with stunning clarity.
He insists it’s no exaggeration to refer to those 24 playoff games between 2000 and 2004 as a “battle.” The hate was thick. He recalls getting goosebumps sitting in his team’s home dressing as chants of “Go Leafs Go!” echoed through the arena before puck drop. He even (correctly) remembers that he faced 42 shots in Game 2 of the 2002 series before Gary Roberts froze the clock in triple overtime, squeaking a low shot off a broken faceoff play through his legs.
Lalime now punctuates that story in his native tongue: “Tabarnak!”
Lalime has no reason to look back upon those easily accessed memories fondly, and yet he smiles through their retelling.
“Those were the best games of my life,” he tells The Athletic. “The most fun I had was playing those games against the Leafs.”
That’s why Lalime is just as thrilled as any hardcore hockey fan in Toronto or Ottawa about the Battle of Ontario being reborn again this spring, clinched Tuesday by the Leafs’ 4-0 win over the Sabres.
The previous four versions were essentially contested in hockey’s prehistoric age. Each of those best-of-sevens came before the NHL introduced a salary cap, and they were played under something resembling prison rules when compared to today’s game, with players able to impede an opponent by any means necessary.
Still, the matchup stirs nostalgia for the 50-year-old goaltender-turned-broadcaster. Those previous series created something special that should now get passed down to the next generation.
“I am excited again,” says Lalime, the lead analyst on the TVA Sports national French-language broadcasts in Canada. “I’m still excited every time I do a Leafs-Sens game. For me, it’s still something that’s there. You know Leafs-Sens, since (Ottawa entered) the league, it’s there, and it’s always going to be there.
“I think who wins out of this, it’s the fans. It’s great for hockey. It’s great for everybody.”
The echoes of history will be felt in buildings formerly known as the Air Canada Centre and Corel Centre — since renamed Scotiabank Arena and Canadian Tire Centre.
Swedish captains Mats Sundin and Daniel Alfredsson have been replaced on the ice by two Americans: Auston Matthews and Brady Tkachuk, who, like their predecessors, are good friends away from the rink. Alfredsson now stands behind the Senators bench as an assistant coach under Travis Green, who was on the Toronto side in the 2002 Battle of Ontario. Tie Domi is one of four skaters to play in every previous playoff game between the teams, and today it’s his son, Max, flashing a gap-toothed grin in a Maple Leafs sweater.
While the previous iteration of the rivalry heated to a boil with the quick succession of playoff meetings, the one thing that should be present right from the start of the redux is an added layer of intensity around the games.
It’s only a four-hour drive between the arenas each team calls home. There will be plenty of fans behind enemy lines. There’s a strong turnout of blue-and-white sweaters for every game played in Ottawa, and as much as the Senators will work to get the tickets into the hands of their own fans, there are limits to how effective those measures can be.
After all, the Leafs had a 76-year headstart over the modern-day Senators as an organization and still have deep roots planted in the Ottawa Valley. That was on full display during the previous Battles of Ontario.
“I remember just being at home, when we were there, and hearing the Leaf fans,” Lalime says. “They were so loud. We were (thinking), ‘We’ve got to score the first goal to take the crowd out of the equation, and we’re playing at home.’ That’s how fun it was.”
While Toronto may have won all four series between the teams, the margins were slim. The Senators actually held a sizable shots advantage on aggregate, 740-617, but they went 0-4 in the games that reached overtime.
As highlighted in this excellent oral history by The Athletic’s Joshua Kloke, the Leafs eventually worked their way into the minds of a more skilled opponent by always finding the slightest edge when the chips were down.
“Every year we played them, on paper, they were most likely the favorite,” former Maple Leafs defenseman Bryan McCabe told Kloke. “But we were their kryptonite.”
From where Lalime sat, the biggest difference came from how the Leafs roster was constructed. Bigger and meaner, they took advantage of the way the game was officiated in that era, slowing things down with hooking and holding infractions that routinely went unpenalized.
“It was different times,” he says. “They were built for that a little more than we were.”
When the Senators and Leafs first met in 2000, Lalime served as backup to Tom Barrasso for a six-game series loss. His first career playoff start came in 2001 on a night Sundin scored in overtime for a 1-0 Toronto win, setting the tone for a sweep that played out over just six days.
From an Ottawa perspective, the real backbreaker came in the 2002 loss to the Leafs in the second round. Lalime went toe-to-toe with counterpart Curtis Joseph across seven games (finishing with a .918 save percentage, compared to Joseph’s .917), but the Senators squandered an early 2-0 lead in Game 6 with a chance to close things out.
Patrick Lalime allows a goal in Game 6 in 2002. (Dave Sandford / Getty Images)
“We thought we had that series on our side,” Lalime says. “It’s a matter of a hit, a save, you know? In the playoffs, there’s so many little things that have to go your way. We were on the wrong side of it.”
The animosity grew between the teams and spilled over to the regular season, where Darcy Tucker once jumped into the Senators bench swinging his fists and Alfredsson mocked Sundin by pretending to throw a stick over the glass after the Leafs captain had done that in frustration during a previous meeting.
While that chapter essentially closed with another seven-game Leafs win in 2004 — Lalime was traded to the St. Louis Blues shortly after — the bad feelings among those who lived it remained.
The Maple Leafs celebrate a Tie Domi goal on Patrick Lalime in Game 5 in 2004. (Dave Sandford / Getty Images)
“It took me I don’t know how many years until I got over the Leafs hate,” Lalime says. “Every time you play them, you just don’t like the Leafs. You just want to beat them and especially more when you’re a Sens player and a Sens fan. Now that I’m doing TV, obviously you let that go, but it’s still there. Every time you’re in the building, every time you’re here, you feel it.”
If anyone from those Ottawa teams has a case for lamenting how the Battle of Ontario affected the narrative arc of his career, it’s Lalime.
In many ways, he beat the odds to have a meaningful NHL career after being the 16th of 36 goalies selected in the 1993 draft. The sixth-round pick played the third-most games of his goaltending peers from that draft class, and he was the only one still holding a job through the 2010-11 season.
Of the 20 career playoff losses Lalime endured, Ottawa was shut out in 11. That includes six of the 12 playoff defeats he suffered at the hands of the Leafs. Heck, Lalime backstopped the Senators all the way to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final in 2003, but he may be remembered most for the two Game 7 goals he allowed to Nieuwendyk in Round 1 the following spring.
While he’d obviously love to change the results against Toronto, he’s grateful he got the chance to play games where he’d be so pumped beforehand that the hair would stand up on his arms.
“It comes with it,” Lalime says. “You want to live all that. You feel the goosebumps. You’re in the room. You know it’s a big game and everything that comes around it. You just want to live the moment. Those really were the best games of my life.
“If you take away the last period, I think for the rest, those were good series and a good rivalry.”
(Top photo of Curtis Leschyshyn and Patrick Lalime leaving the ice after Game 3 in 2001: Harry How / Getty Images)