Toronto Maple Leafs/X

Mark Scheifele seems to have learned the hard way that the Toronto Maple Leafs can be an easy team to poke fun at, but it doesn’t mean they won’t fire back themselves from time to time.

On Monday night in Winnipeg, the Jets entered with an eight-game winning streak to start the regular season, and were looking to make Toronto their latest casualty on the season. But the Leafs had other plans, downing the Jets 6-4 in a back-and-forth affair to give Winnipeg their first blemish on their record.

Following the game, an old clip of Scheifele began to resurface on social media of his postgame speech following a 6-3 win over Toronto back in 2021.

“Is there anything better than beating the Leafs?” Scheifele proclaimed at the time while handing out the team’s victory helmet to Logan Stanley.

 

The clip certainly rubbed a lot of Leafs nation the wrong way, due in no small part to the fact that Toronto and Winnipeg don’t have much of a deep rivalry to begin with. They’ve never faced each other in the playoffs, don’t play in the same conference, and well, the Jets  don’t exactly rank highly among the Leafs’ biggest rivals.

It turns out, it might take a bit of time for Scheifele to ever have that feeling again. Since his proclamation nearly three years ago, Toronto has now gone 6-0 against Winnipeg in the regular season.

And while a few fans remembered Scheifele’s quip, the Leafs themselves made sure to stir the pot on social media.

“Anything better than a new belt pic?” the Leafs posted on X, with a photo of Max Domi and belt-winner John Tavares holding the team’s postgame prize.

It’s a subtle dig, but a very pointed one nonetheless.

It will be a little under two months before these two teams get a chance to renew their hostilities, with the two teams next facing off December 23 in Toronto.