Ryan Reaves sends a message to Brad Marchand.

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Boston Bruins rivalry is heating up early.

The well established rivalry between these two teams has picked up considerable steam coming off the heels of an injury to Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Timothy Liljegren, and now Maple Leafs enforcer Ryan Reaves is adding more fuel to the fire.

Liljegren was injured during Thursday's meeting between the two squads after a puck battle with notorious Bruins agitator Brad Marchand sent him crashing awkwardly into the boards. That incident would lead to a long term injury for Liljegren and now Reaves has a message for the Bruins forward.

"First of all, 'Get away from the bench,'" said Reaves of Marchand on Saturday. "Second of all, I guess he was lucky I wasn’t out on the ice with him. Yeah, unfortunately they had last chance so I didn’t get any shifts against him."

Reaves was signed to a 3 year deal this summer expressly to handle these types of situations for the Maple Leafs but, in spite of the Leafs adding more toughness in the offseason, many fans were left disappointed by the response from both Reaves and the rest of the Maple Leafs to the Liljegren injury.

No doubt the Leafs will be looking to extract some measure of revenge on Marchand when these two teams next meet, but they will have to wait roughly a month to do so with the next meeting between these two squads scheduled for December 2nd.