Former Leafs enforcer rips the team to shreds after failing to stick up for Timothy Liljegren in Boston
The Toronto Maple Leafs suffered their 3rd consecutive defeat last night in the form of a 3-2 shootout loss to the Boston Bruins. While Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner began to show signs of life at 5-on-5, each scoring a goal to knot the game at 2 just over a minute apart, it just wasn't enough - but that wasn't the story in this one.
Let's rewind the clock a bit. The Bruins came into the season with several question marks as they were going to be without Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Taylor Hall, Tyler Bertuzzi, and Dmitry Orlov from their record-setting 2022-23 season. Instead they're now 9-0-1 to start the year and were without several key members last night in Charlie McAvoy, Matt Grzelcyk, Derek Forbort, and Milan Lucic.
Both Jeremy Swayman and Ilya Samsonov were fantastic in goal with the former stopping 33 shots and latter making 38 saves. Again - that wasn't the story.
During the late stages of the first period, Brad Marchand took the feet out from under Timothy Liljegren, sending the defender crashing into the boards with momentum. It wasn't a typical slew-foot that we've seen in the past. Instead, Marchand stuck his stick between the feet of Liljegren and pulled them out from under him. As a result, the Leafs defenseman was forced out of the game and will miss a significant amount of time, but what bothered former Leaf Jay Rosehill the most was what he saw afterwards from the team - more specifically the bench reaction:
They're all sitting there like there's a delay of game or the kid is shoveling the ice or something and they're up 5 goals. They should be chomping at the bit to kill that guy because of what he just did to your teammate. You are a team. You ever see a team win a Stanley Cup together and how tight they are, that bond and brotherhood they have?... Does this team give a shit about each other? They do not show that they do, they do not show that they care. They are a whole group of individuals who are good at hockey. That's great, but together, they're garbage.
They lose in the playoffs every single year, they always do. We wonder why is it happening, and let's just do the same thing this year and see if anything changes. Until they play for each other and giving a shit about the jersey that they're wearing that goes back to World War I, something that means a lot to a lot of people, apparently not a lot to the guys wearing it right now because that's sickening watching a guy snap his leg in half and then the guy, the perpetrator, the dirtiest rat in the league that everyone hates to play against, comes over and says whatever he says to the bench and everyone just looks at their god damn skates.
It starts with the leadership, it starts with Tavares, it starts with the big boys, you've been around long enough, John, to not handle that bullshit the way you did. Step up and do something man. Where's Domi? Where's Bertuzzi? Those are the guys that can go after Marchand. I hate seeing that with a team I care about, it's embarrassing."
Rosehill was hoping, at the very least, that the Maple Leafs would wake up after seeing one of their teammates get injured by a dirty play. Instead, they sat back, allowed Marchand to chirp away, and didn't even try to get up in his grill afterwards or for the rest of the game. The usual reaction after something like that is a melee, skirmish, or scuffle, but Rosehill saw none of that and was absolutely disgusted.
He points to the lack of pride of wearing the storied Maple Leaf jersey - a jersey he wore in the past and took a lot of pride in. The lack of togetherness from this group of players, and the core not leading this team to greener pastures was flat out embarrassing, according to Rosehill, and he's not wrong.
It's not like it was Pavel Zacha or Danton Heinen who delivered the blow either, it was a player who has gotten under their skin repeatedly for years on end, doing what he does best and then not getting a reaction of any kind from the rest of the Blue and White jerseys. Sticking up for teammates after a play like that is an unwritten rule in hockey and Rosehill poignantly shows us proof that the Maple Leafs were lacking in that department. This team needs to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror, because what they're showing us through 10 games is not any different than what we've seen during the entire "Core 4" era.
| POLL | ||
NOVEMBRE 3 | 864 ANSWERS Former Leafs enforcer rips the team to shreds after failing to stick up for Timothy Liljegren in Boston What do you think of Jay Rosehill's take on how the Leafs the Marchand/Liljegren incident? | ||
| He's absolutely right | 805 | 93.2 % |
| Just an ex-enforcer not understanding the new game | 30 | 3.5 % |
| Strongly disagree | 29 | 3.4 % |
| List of polls | ||
