The Battle of Ontario just got a little bit weirder.
On Friday morning, just hours after the dust of Game 3 settled and the Toronto Maple Leafs walked away from the Canadian Tire Centre with a 3-0 series lead over the Ottawa Senators, TSN's Darren Dreger posted on social media that the NHL is "looking at an incident in warmup" before the puck was dropped. Dreger adds that it is undetermined if any discipline will follow this supposed investigation.
Shortly after, Senators reporter Bruce Garrioch added more context to the extremely vague post from Dreger. Garrioch posted that at one point during warmups, there were pucks being lobbed into Toronto's end towards goaltender Anthony Stolarz as both teams were on the ice before puckdrop. Specifically, he noticed that Senators top center Tim Stutzle was one player that, as he was skating around center ice, sent a puck down to the other end.
And naturally, Dreger confirmed that the Ottawa players firing pucks down towards the Leafs was actually the incident in question.
Source indicates this in the incident in question. Sens players firing pucks at Stolarz in warmup. https://t.co/c5JmFgKCrV
— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) April 25, 2025
Sometimes, you just have to laugh. The moment Dreger posted his initial tweet, thoughts of what possibly could be the worst-case scenario flooded our minds. No context or clue what could have taken place before the game that people wouldn't have pointed out immediately from the press box or the stands. But it ended up being just that some Senators players were trying to get under the skin of the Maple Leafs.
While the action is just silly to even be heated about or really think of it for more than a split second, it is just a little cowardly to try pre-game tactics to rile up the visiting team in your own arena. For some reason, if the location was switched and the Senators were doing this at Scotiabank Arena, trying to be the pesky visiting team to not let the home-ice advantage truly be an advantage, it would feel more strategic. Firing pucks down the ice in this attempt to get under the Leafs' team-wide skin while in Ottawa, feels like something you would expect from a team that is simply the little brother of the rivalry.
So, maybe it does make sense afterall.
If the teams were switched and Toronto was firing pucks down towards Linus Ullmark, they probably would've ended up in the back of the net like many of them have during actual game action.
We'll see where this goes from here, if anywhere, but the Leafs will have to take center stage at the Canadian Tire Centre once again for Game 4 on Saturday night with the chance to make it a first-round sweep.