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Updated: November 8, 2024 @ 9:44 am
Before joining the NHL, Rempe fought in about 15% of his games in the American Hockey League (AHL). In 152 non-NHL games, he fought 23 times.
Staff Writer
Before joining the NHL, Rempe fought in about 15% of his games in the American Hockey League (AHL). In 152 non-NHL games, he fought 23 times.
Hockey has long been one of the United States’ most slept on sports. Despite not getting the shine or publicity that athletes in other major American sports receive, players in the National Hockey League exhibit a breathtaking combination of skill and athleticism, careening around the ice at breakneck speeds with finesse and power.
If you watch an NHL game, you might see a lacrosse-style goal from the young Connor Bedard, a Nathan MacKinnon solo goal that covers the length of the ice, or an Auston Matthews hat-trick, which seems to occur every other game for the Toronto star.
Rangers center Matt Rempe will not show you any of these things. In fact, Rempe can barely play hockey.
If you happen to find yourself privileged enough to turn on a Rangers game in which the 6-foot-9, 255-pound behemoth actually sees the ice, you’ll see him trudge around the rink with a stunningly bad sense of positioning, exhibiting poor stickhandling when he actually gets the puck. His only career regular season goal came by accident when a teammate’s shot went in off his foot. Rempe doesn’t play hockey; rather, hockey kind of just happens to him.
MATT REMPE FIRST CAREER NHL GOAL 🚨 pic.twitter.com/zfjhMWdMhR
So, given his obvious lack of skill, you may be wondering, “How on earth did this guy make a NHL roster?”
While Rempe’s gargantuan size makes it difficult for him to move laterally on the court, it gives him a massive advantage over almost anyone in the league in a fistfight. Enforcers are an archetype of player tasked with hitting people and getting in fights. This has long existed in the NHL, but Rempe pushes the enforcer role to its absolute limit, as no enforcer (or player, really) has ever seen the ice with such an apparent dearth of talent. Quite literally, Rempe’s only purpose on the Rangers is to fight people.
After getting called up to the NHL by the Rangers midway through the season, Rempe saw the ice for New York in 17 games. Of these appearances, according to hockeyfights.com, Rempe exchanged blows with somebody in five of them. To put this in perspective, Philadelphia’s Nicolas Deslauriers led the NHL in total fights last season with 11 in 60 games. Despite making less than a quarter of the appearances of the most prolific enforcer in the league in 2023-24, Rempe got into almost half as many fights.
Where were you when 6’1″ 33 year old Nicolas Deslauriers took down 6’7″ 21 year old Matt Rempe at the Farg? #Flyers pic.twitter.com/VCdNuzdBn4
Essentially, Rempe is on an unprecedented fighting pace, averaging a fight around every three games. He’s also in rarefied air as far as penalty minutes. Penalties in hockey are enforced with time spent in a penalty box, and Rempe logged 71 total PIM (penalties in minutes) last season, good for 57th in the league.
This would be unimpressive if not for the fact that all but three of the 56 players ahead of Rempe spent more than 500 minutes in total on the ice. Rempe didn’t even crack 100.
As far as the ratio between penalty minutes and total minutes, the only player in the same stratosphere as Rempe is Tampa Bay’s Austin Watson, who had 93 PIM compared to 239 minutes on the ice, and he’s still miles away from Rempe in this regard. Not only that, but Rempe nearly spent as much time in the penalty box as he did on the ice — a mind-boggling feat.
The best part? Rempe may be even more threatening this season. Instead of spending the offseason working on his game, which desperately needs improvement in almost every area, Rempe spent his time off honing his fighting technique with legendary enforcer Georges Laraque — one of the only players in league history that has approached Rempe’s fighting pace, with 159 career fights in 695 appearances.
Laraque put it best after their three-day “fight camp” concluded in Edmonton this summer.
“I’m telling you, the Rempe that you see — and again, not saying that he’s going to look for it, but because of how physical he is, it might happen — you will see a much different fighter,” Laraque said in an interview with the New York Times. “I pity any of these guys that will have to answer to him.”
Brooks Coleman is a staff writer.
Staff Writer
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