Tiger Williams, barking over the phone from northern British Columbia, sounded apoplectic.

“You’ve got to have a Colton Orr around,” Williams was saying. “I love Colton Orr.”

Williams, who enjoyed a star turn as a beloved Maple Leafs enforcer in the 1970s, was speaking after he’d heard Monday’s news out of Toronto that both of the team’s present-day tough guys, Orr and Frazer McLaren, had been cut from the opening-night roster to make room for younger, more skilled players.

It was a seismic revelation for some. Broad Street may have made hockey bullies famous, but Bay Street has always loved its fistic furies. It was a little less than 40 years ago that Williams was called up from the minors and promptly shattered the Maple Leafs franchise record for penalty minutes in a season. The franchise has scarcely gone without an accomplished bruiser since.

But hockey’s changing. In a copy-cat league, it’s been duly noted that the Stanley Cup champion L.A. Kings found success rolling four lines loaded with speed and skill. Now that the Kings and Chicago Blackhawks and others have resisted the age-old urge to stock the bottom of the lineup with a little-used heavyweight — now that their strength-in-depth approach has been shown to reduce the wear and tear on top-line talent — players known primarily for pugilistic talent aren’t having an easy time finding work.

Williams, who has spent more time in an NHL penalty box than anyone, is of the belief the trend is a mistake.

“Here’s my question to everyone in the hockey world: Can that guy you keep (instead of an enforcer) change the game? Can that guy tell his teammates, ‘I’ve got your back, no matter what?’ I don’t think so,” Williams, 60, said. “To me, it’s an arsenal you need.”

The Leafs decided they’re more in need of the likes of Carter Ashton and Brandon Kozun, the latter a speedy, quick-handed Californian who is listed at five-foot-eight.

Certainly the decision went against everything Randy Carlyle, the Toronto head coach, has espoused about the necessity of the bloody-fisted arts. Carlyle has often credited his most successful moments in Toronto — specifically a playoff run in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season that saw the Leafs lead the league in fighting majors — to his team’s black-and-blue identity. If the banishment of Orr and McLaren to the waiver wire looked suspiciously like the work of the new voices on the management team led by team president Brendan Shanahan, Carlyle sounded as though he couldn’t wait for the theoretical opportunity to recall one of Orr and McLaren from the AHL Marlies, should they clear waivers and be assigned there on Tuesday.

“I don’t think it’s a philosophical change,” Carlyle said of what looked an awful lot like a philosophical change. “Because (Orr and McLaren) aren’t on our list today doesn’t mean they won’t be on our list Friday or Saturday or the day after.”

Williams, absorbing all this information from across a continent, said it reminded him of a hunting trip he took with former Vancouver Canucks GM Mike Gillis on the eve of the 2010-11 season that would conclude with the Canucks being manhandled by the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup final.

“We were hunting together and I told him, ‘Mike, you’ve got to go get yourself a tough guy. Do it no matter what.’ And he told me he disagreed with me. I said, ‘It’s going to bite you in the ass, man.’ And it did . . . They lost to Boston because they got bullied. That’s the only reason they lost.”

On Monday the Leafs insisted they won’t be pushed around by anyone. Nonis spoke of the importance of having a “pack mentality,” wherein any number of players can drop the gloves if necessary. David Clarkson is a candidate for those duties, as are the likes of Dion Phaneuf and Joffrey Lupul and Ashton. The list goes on.

Williams, over the phone connection from Prince George, B.C., cackled a little when this theory was relayed to him.

“If it’s Joffrey who’s going to be the guy who’s going to look after me, holy (geez). I’m going to have to go on steroids,” said Williams.

Williams said the enforcers of his era — Dave Semenko, Terry O’Reilly, Dave (The Hammer) Schultz — “we’d kill Joffrey Lupul. He’d be in the hospital. His career would be over.”

And more to his point, he doesn’t see the value in asking skilled players like Lupul to even the scores not tallied with goals and assists.

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“To me, you’ve got to stay inside your realm of expertise,” he said. “Us older guys, we played in a different era and things were different. Half of us would be in jail under these new rules anyway. But I want guys on my team who are the best at whatever they do. If they score goals, score goals. If they fight, fight.”

Williams, after a lengthy chat, said he had to get going. He’s a “professional grandfather” now, and also a trophy hunter who’s killed everything from a grizzly bear to a muskox. On Monday afternoon he was combining his passions to take one of his grandkids hunting. He said he’d be happy to talk hockey anytime.

“You know, there’ll come a day when I’m not right about this,” he said. “I don’t think that’s today, in my opinion. But I think that day’s going to come.”

It appears to have come to Leafland sooner than many figured it would.

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