I've said it a few times over the last 6 years; the league treats the Matthews iteration of the Leafs like they're the 2002 Domi-Tucker iteration in the playoffs and they have to be beaten down if they play even slightly physical...
But as a result we get stuff like not playing our hitters and guys not taking the body when they should, because no one knows if hitting a player is going to be a penalty...
Ask yourselves why the majority of players who come to the Leafs stop hitting, even if hitting was a major part of their game. Considering Keefe's teams in the past were gritty hitting teams, I don't think it's either him or Dubas. It's because hitting = penalties in Toronto.
The 2018 series vs Boston made it abundantly clear to me how the league is going to treat this new Leafs team.
Game 1 the first period the Bruins were literally trying to injure the Leafs every shift. It was a shitshow that boiled over and by the 3rd period, Kadri tried fighting fire with fire and ofc he's the only one who got suspended even though Marchand, Pastrnak and Debrusk all did equally as bad shit.
But the media targeted Toronto and made Kadri the devil and the silly Leafs fans went along with them and threw their own player under the bus. A lot of this problem is people in general not being critical thinkers and being unable to see the bigger picture of things - so much that Leafs fans got fooled by their own media into thinking Kadri was the only bad guy.
We had a rerun of this in 2019 with Kadri getting suspended again and once again the dumb Leafs fans bought into the media narrative of Kadri being the bad guy and the dirty Bruins players slipped between the cracks again because the media did not put any attention on them.
