Battle of Ontario
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The Battle of Ontario is a name for the young but heated ice hockey rivalry between the Ottawa Senators NHL team and their provincial rivals the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The traditional rivals of the Maple Leafs were always the Montreal Canadiens, but after decades of not meeting in the playoffs and during a period when Montreal failed to ice competitive teams for many years that rivalry began to fade. The other long standing Maple Leaf rivals, the Detroit Red Wings, had been placed in a different conference after a reorganization of the league and the teams only met once or twice a year.
The expansion Ottawa Senators, after a few years of being one of the worst teams in the NHL began to transform into a cup contender in the late 1990s. With five games against each other during the regular season a rivalry began to develop. Many Senators fans were ex-Leaf supporters who had turned strongly against their old team.
The rivalry truly came into existence in the playoffs, however. From 2000 to 2004 the Leafs met the Senators four out of five years. In 2000 the somewhat favoured Senators fell to the Leafs in six games in the first round. The next year, again the first round, the underdog Leafs swept the Sens in four games causing shock in the nation's capital. In 2002 the two teams met in the second round and despite Toronto missing many of its top players managed to beat the Senators in a hard fought seven-game series.
In 2003 the Leafs were eliminated by the Philadelphia Flyers, who were then easily dispatched by the Ottawa Senators who went on to make it to game seven of the conference finals. This is considered an indirect victory by Ottawa fans, but both sides acknowledged that nothing but a direct meeting would resolve anything.
In 2004 the two met again in the first round with the Leafs somewhat favoured. The series went to the full seven games with the Senators again falling to the Leafs.