Team toughness is once again the talk of the town in the NHL, largely thanks to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The conversation went nuclear on Thursday after Anaheim Ducks defenceman Radko Gudas hit Leafs centre Auston Matthews with a knee-on-knee collision, and none of the other Leafs’ players went after Gudas in defence of their superstar captain.

While there were a couple of scraps and big hits in the third period, and Leafs like William Nylander and Morgan Rielly brushed off the problem, claiming they didn’t get a good look at the hit, the damage was done, and a rough Leafs’ season stooped to a new low with how poorly the team looked in that moment.

CBC analyst and former Vancouver Canuck Kevin Bieksa spoke on the moment during the pregame analysis of the Leafs’ Saturday night matchup against the Buffalo Sabres. When discussing the matter, he used his time with the Canucks as an example of how he and his teammates would stick up for each other, especially their stars.

“I just think about when I played, the Sedins were the untouchables. Problems for you would have been a Teemu Selanne and [Scott] Niedermayer, Kelly. You played with Wayne Gretzky,” Bieksa said on the broadcast. “If those guys got touched, I would fight Andre the Giant. I would jump on Andre the Giant’s back, and I would expect all four other guys on my team to do the same thing.”

Bieksa, a 2001 fifth-round pick of the Canucks, spent his first 10 seasons in Vancouver, all with the Henrik and Daniel Sedin. While Bieksa was productive with the Canucks, scoring 241 points in 597 games, he also stood up for his teammates, logging 69 fights. That kind of toughness brewed confidence in the team, helping them to two Presidents’ Trophies and a trip to the Stanley Cup Final during the height of that core’s contention window.