If rugby and football can get by without fighting, then so can hockey. It’s an absurd vestige of a bygone time.
By now, you’ve heard of Matt Rempe. Either that, or you have been living in Timbuktu.
ESPN jumped on the bandwagon last week with a piece headlined “The Legend of Matt Rempe,” about a guy who at that point had racked up all of 28 minutes of playing time in the NHL to go with his 32 minutes in penalties.
Rempe plays for the New York Rangers, which may have something to do with the hype. He’s large — almost Zdeno Chara large, although he isn’t Chara good. Ten goals over two seasons in almost 100 games as a centre with the Hartford Wolf Pack isn’t going to frighten NHL goalies.
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The designated fighters, that’s another matter. Rempe is 6-foot-8 and 240 pounds and he fights almost every time out. It’s not that he’s accepting fights, he’s initiating them. In seven games with the Rangers, Rempe’s totals are now 39 penalty minutes in less than 34 minutes on the ice. He isn’t Chara as a fighter either. Against a washed-up Ryan Reaves Saturday, Rempe barely managed a draw.
Let’s say Rempe is in the blue corner. In the red corner, standing 6-foot-4 and weighing 240 pounds, you’ll find 23-year-old Canadiens defenceman Arber Xhekaj. Xhekaj may not be the reigning NHL heavyweight champ, but he’s been a contender since he demolished Zach Kassian early in his rookie season.
A couple of months later, Ottawa’s Brady Tkachuk hit Xhekaj and then sped to the Ottawa bench before Xhekaj could retaliate and the big defenceman’s reputation was made.
If you’re of a certain cast of mind, you’ve circled April 7 on your calendar. That’s a Sunday night game at Madison Square Garden in New York, when the Canadiens meet the Rangers and a good portion of the crowd will be hoping for a heavyweight title bout between Rempe and Xhekaj as the main attraction.
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Tell ya what, fellas — let’s not. Let’s simply not fight. Let’s not do that thing where you’re waiting for a faceoff and Rempe says to Xhekaj, “so, ya wanna go?” and Xhekaj, who would fight a grizzly bear, feels that he can’t say no.
Staged fights are trash. There’s no enforcement excuse. They have nothing to do with either the flow or the outcome of a game. They get the crowd pumped but goals, great plays, big hits and big saves have the same effect.
As hockey writer Ken Campbell called the Reaves-Rempe Tussle “a perfect example of the Ponzi scheme these dancing bears have with hockey: 1. Convince people you’re needed to keep the peace. 2. Continually disrupt the peace by going over the line. 3. Fight, thereby justifying your existence.
Thing is, Xhekaj is not a dancing bear or a one-trick pony, to mix our animal metaphors. He can actually play hockey. That 107-mph slapshot is as fearsome a weapon as his fists. When he’s on the ice, Xhekaj is a visible presence out there. He’s still ironing out his game but at worst he’s no Reaves, clunking around pretending to skate until it’s time to fight.
Martin St. Louis doesn’t like “the Sheriff” as a nickname for Xhekaj and that’s understandable. “Wifi” is clever but “Sheriff” is accurate. When you’re going to have players like Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson in your lineup, there’s a definite role Xhekaj can perform.
We know the risks of fighting. We know the long-term damage fighting can do, we know about CTE. Even the QMJHL has had the good sense to change the fighting rules this season and to eject the participants in a fight from the game and to issue a one-game ban to instigators. It is not, as advertised, a “ban” on hockey but an attempt to reduce the number of fights and so far, it has had little or no effect on attendance.
If rugby and football, two of the roughest sports on the planet, can get by without fighting then so can hockey. It’s an absurd vestige of a bygone time and other than making Don Cherry a very wealthy man, I don’t know that it’s ever done the game any good.
Yet the violence and the praise of violence in the game persists. Leafs defenceman Morgan Rielly recently returned from a five-game suspension for his assault on Ottawa’s Ridly Greig, who was attacked for the utterly frivolous reason that Greig took a slapshot into an empty net.
Before Rielly returned to the ice, veteran Leafs broadcaster Joe Bowen called for him to receive an ovation in Toronto. If elderly broadcasters can’t see what’s wrong with that, how can we expect young players to cease and desist?
If Matt Rempe can play in the NHL without fighting, good for him. If this is all he can do, there should be no room for him and shame on ESPN for calling the man a legend.
Heroes: Nick Suzuki, Samuel Montembeault, Phillip Danault, Marie-Philip Poulin, Mélodie Daoust, Laura Stacey, Elaine Chuli &&&& last but not least, Sarah Mitton.
Zeros: Morgan Rielly, Matt Rempe, Ryan Reaves, Joe Bowen, Mark Chipman, Christian Horner, Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last but not least, Jeffrey Loria.
Now and forever.
jacktodd46@yahoo.com
twitter.com/jacktodd46
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