Playoff hockey, it’s probably one of the best things about the NHL, besides it being hockey. I mean, being Canadian, you literally breathe hockey, even if you haven’t played before.

You probably have.

The Maple Leafs spent a long time not winning many games, a long time not in the playoffs, and I don’t even know if we remember what a Stanley Cup Championship win feels like (we know how one looks, Toronto has The Hockey Hall of Fame ffs). I don’t usually write about sports, if I had to be truly honest, I don’t want to. After years of seeing the media tear apart Kadri, as if he is the guy everyone get’s to throw their Haterade at, while the media offers no support, fuck this.

Let me break it down for you, it was game number two between Toronto (yay!) and Boston (boo!). The game started off really physical, I thought for the first period Boston had just thrown Toronto around. They put two in the back of the net, and the first period was done. Now there were some questionable calls and a lot of calls that were not being made; to be fair, it wasn’t that bad and things went both ways. I knew they had some key players picked, and you know they were there to agitate Kadri. First period, James DeBrusk and Nazeem Kadri both had penalties for roughing. I thought that was a lame call for both players, but whatever.

The second period was, for the most part, the same. It just looked like the players had gotten into the game more and turned up the intensity. I mean these Leaf players didn’t come to play it seemed. Jonathan Tavares got rammed into the net it and pretty much sat on, just manhandled. I don’t know was Matthews scared of getting hurt, possibly Boston was roughing them every way possible. Glove washing the face, extra hits to the head here and there. Kadri got penalized for absolutely no reason, I didn’t even see a penalty.

Anyway, here’s a recap of all the bullshit that went on, watch the extra hits and sticks.

I watched the Scotiabank Game In Six for a recap, not one shot of the knee on knee collision with Kadri. But they showed him cross-checking DeBrusk in his dirty face. They didn’t even show that he ran Patrick Marleau along the boards and into the ends of the glass. So Toronto media needs to step up their game, after the game, after my beers I came home and wondered what these garbage Toronto journalists are going to make of this.

I get an alert on my phone, and there’s an ad on my phone for a newspaper called The Toronto Sun, and this guy just talks about how Kadri is a repeat offender, his future with the Leaf organization is questionable, they need to move him. Then there are articles popping up all weekend, The Globe Mail had another vicious article, TheStar is actually not that bad, they have The Monday MailBag which has a lot of good responses in comparison to the rest of the media. Last Year, Kadri got suspended for 5 games, for a hit that wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the other hits I have seen go around the NHL. There was a good response to a question in TheStars’ Mondays Mailbag about Kadri’s past suspension that said: “when handing out suspensions, those guys just throw darts at a board”.

I don’t agree with the criticism that Kadri went down “not fighting” at all. This guy literally, can’t get a break, you’d say it’s just bad luck, but it’s not. Bad luck doesn’t last for years. Kadri has been getting shafted since Mike Babcock got on that team; like he is some martyr. I’m not saying Babcock is a bad coach, Toronto really has made a fantastic turnaround, but there are many factors to a team. There wasn’t enough emphasis placed on that knee on knee collision with Kadri and Debrusk.  Kadri just coming off that penalty that should’ve have been called, picked the pocket of a player and just as he turned Debrusk stuck his leg out.  Even the announcer is saying “Oh, Kadri jumped and it made it worse for himself”. Check it out below;

You saw what happened, no call, does Kadri deserve to be bullied like this in the media? Not what I had in mind when I thought of Toronto being strong behind their own.

Basically Don Cherry said Toronto shouldn’t complain to the referees, yet Boston can whisper shit in their ear like it’s nothing right. I think these referees need to stop listening to players and start looking toward what’s happening on the ice. It may be playoff hockey, but you don’t get to pick and choose which penalties get called, you either call them all, or you let the roughing stuff slide.

Most of Toronto sports media journalists are disloyal to the city they work in, how do you honestly live with yourselves? Look at the patriotism and loyalty the majority of American teams have. CBS sports even had an article that said it was a “definite knee on knee”, even some Americans have a line.