The prototypical NHL enforcer has, for the most part, gone the way of the dinosaurs. There are only a handful of players left in the league that are paid exclusively to punch other people in the face. As the overall talent level in the NHL continues to rise, it no longer makes sense for most teams to employ an “enforcer” that isn’t good for much besides fighting. But there are still a few remaining players that define “old time hockey” and when they do, the primal urge of hockey fans to rally around a UFC-caliber heavyweight bout on ice rises.
And listen, before we dig into this touchy topic, it seems worth noting that I’m not necessarily against fighting in hockey. In certain scenarios there’s still a time and a place for it in the sport. If there’s a heat of the moment scrap in a tight game against a rival team, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it considering the player dropping the gloves is engaging in one of maybe two or three fights in their entire career.
On the whole, most players aren’t taking life-altering risks when it comes to fighting once or twice, and when their average opponent isn’t an experienced grappler either, most modern day fights tend to look like interpretive dances rather than combat.
And that brings us to New York Rangers rookie forward Matt Rempe. The hulking 6’7 240lb 21-year-old earned an NHL recall on February 18. He’s played eight games since and already has five fights under his belt. His brawls have gone viral on social media and his face is sporting the battle scars from the contests in the form of two black eyes and bruising that’s ranging from his hairline to his mouth.
In Rempe’s case, he’s fighting some of the toughest customers in the game today. He’s had five fights in the span of eight games over two weeks against the likes of Ryan Reaves, Nic Deslauriers and Matt Martin. He’s had a total of 12 fights through the 2023-24 season at the AHL and NHL level combined, and with six weeks remaining in the campaign, he’s bound to have a few more.
It goes from an energizing tactic to worrying about the health of the player who is constantly fighting and getting punched in the head.
It’s 2024. We as a species know about head trauma and brain injuries and concussions and CTE. We know that hockey is a particularly dangerous sport when it comes to head injuries when it’s played normally, before factoring in the few remaining cavemen who exacerbate the dangers.
And this does not exonerate Rempe himself for accepting the battles, or prearranging them before the game. He’s trying to make a name for himself and do what he can to stick in the NHL. But when all the veteran scrappers have to step to the 21-year-old as some kind of initiation or defending their own fragile egos, it takes the spirit out of the altercation.
Once all the veteran enforcers have their turn with the rookie and he’s earned their respect (or they see him as properly broken in), do things subside? Maybe to some degree, but he’ll just convert to one of the old dogs himself. That may entail slightly less frequent fights, but he’ll still be the player on the Rangers tasked with dropping the gloves.
And that’s assuming he stays in the NHL. At the end of the day, the behemoth forward isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire from a contribution standpoint. He has two points in eight NHL games and just 12 points in 43 AHL games. He did manage to rack up 96 penalty minutes this season in the minor leagues, however, with an additional 37 so far in the NHL. Fighting on the whole is a much more regular occurrence in the minor leagues than the NHL. There are more enforcers per capita in the AHL than the NHL, mainly because they’re not good enough to play in the big leagues anymore.
An obvious rule change the NHL should consider is preventing from players from fighting in consecutive games. If they do there’s an immediate suspension. It’s, at the bare minimum, a chance to give the player a few days to recover from the previous fight. For reference, Rempe would’ve broke that rule twice already.
There will always be staunch defenders of fighting in hockey. The same kind of low-level scumbags that watch auto racing in hopes of seeing a fiery fatal crash. There’s no care for the human beings putting their own health on the line for your entertainment.
Yes, every player (theoretically) understands the risk they’re taking playing the sport and especially when it comes to fighting, but when the shockwaves of their decisions aren’t felt immediately by either the fans or players themselves, it’s easy to wash off criticism of fighting as being “soft” or some other slightly offensive term to describe the folks worried for the player’s safety later on in their life.
The manly, tough guy side of hockey culture is never on display more prominently than when it comes to fighting. The feral, insecure boomers who grew up when the sport was MMA on ice and color commentators that were formerly enforcers themselves put their third grade educations to good use to talk about how critical it is players need to do long-term, irreparable damage to themselves for the paying audience’s amusement.
At the end of the day, when these players leave the spotlight when their career is over, the ravenous dingbats who defend fighting in the sport are going to forget all about the player. But the player has to go on living. They’ve probably got a wife and kids. A family that then has to deal with the effects of the player’s choices for the rest of his, and their, life. Not everybody is going to deal with major problems… but some will. And we know what the worst case scenario looks like when it happens. A fate that nobody should have to endure, especially when the cause was completely preventable in the first place. You can’t say it will never happen, because it has. It’s not a hypothetical.
Having goons on the roster has never been preventive, it’s always been reactionary. Luckily, things do seem to naturally be trending in the right direction naturally. Maybe in another five to ten years the meathead enforcers are phased out entirely. But hockey culture is still a problem, and Rempe’s emergence has not only reignited a debate about player safety, but highlighted how fast things can get out of hand. Does the league step in and make any real changes to their rules about fighting? Probably not. But for Matt Rempe’s sake, let’s just hope things lighten up for him because 21 years old is just too young to be doing this kind of damage to himself.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: sportsnet.ca
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