Earlier this week, the Toronto Maple Leafs narrowly beat the Edmonton Oilers 3-2 in OT and the main theme of the night was how Nazem Kadri was able to shut down Connor McDavid. Toronto’s feisty centre was all over Edmonton’s superstar, and “held” McDavid to four shots on goal, zero points and a minus-2 rating in 22:46 of ice time.
Kadri, on the other side, scored two goals including the game-winner, in which he fought off McDavid.
On Coach’s Corner Saturday night, Don Cherry sounded off on the match-up and was not pleased none of the Oilers’ big bodies stood up for their captain.
“There’s no way he should have been permitted to do what he did (to McDavid),” Cherry said. “You can’t do that. Somebody should have stepped in. It’s embarrassing. Look what he’s doing the whole time. You can’t do that to a superstar. You can’t just go and talk. I know Lucic tried and everything. You can’t have a guy treated like that. That’s a star.
“You can’t have a guy treated like that, somebody should have stepped in.”
For an example of how Cherry believes the Oilers should have responded to Kadri and the Maple Leafs, he looked to none other than Max Domi, son of former Leafs enforcer Tie.
On Friday night, Max Domi’s Coyotes were playing the Anaheim Ducks and he took exception to a hit Ryan Kesler threw on teammate and defenceman Jakob Chychrun. Domi’s punch on Kesler immediately went viral online.
“Now watch here, Kesler runs at a rookie. He’s just a kid. He’s 19 years old. And Tie Domi’s kid Max goes up: ‘You can’t do that! You can’t do that to my rookie!’ And watch what happens, the old Domi blood comes out, boom, he got him like that.
“That’s what you do, you can’t have a guy running a rookie.”
