NEarly in the third period on Saturday night in Toronto, it finally – and inevitably – happened. Leafs tough guy Ryan Reaves square at center ice with Matt Rempe, the hulking New York Rangers rookie. Rempe, a 6-foot-1, 240-pound center, has one goal and one assist in his first seven games in the NHL. He also has 37 penalty minutes, five more than he actually spent on the ice. He is what most people would call an “enforcer” – a role that has more or less disappeared from the NHL in recent years. That’s not to say there aren’t still guys willing to drop the gloves or play a more physical than finesse game – every team has at least one. But what Rempe does is different.
Rempe has spent most of his time fighting so far. This kind of thing hasn’t been seen in the NHL in years for a number of reasons. First, boys died. The deaths among enforcers on the ice Derek Boogaard, Wade BelakAnd Rik Rypien within just months of each other in 2011 were a catalyst for change. In the years since, the case against the so-called “goon” has grown stronger. For example, multiple studies have linked fighting to CTE — even though the NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman, has still disputed the link. But around the same time, there was another change in hockey: analytics. In recent years, every player and prospect has been subjected to intensive, data-driven analysis, and teams endlessly search for quantifiable statistics – in addition to human scouting reports – to chart a path to victory. An enforcer does not simply fit into this new matrix. They rarely generate points and typically don’t skate well or fast enough, let alone create things like consistently successful zone entries.
Then there is the cultural aspect. While the NHL and hockey more broadly have taken into account the damage done to the health of enforcers, there has also been public resistance to fighting as a spectacle, especially at the elite level. Surveys about the last decade show that Canadian fans remain divided over the idea of completely banning fighting in professional hockey, but its relative barbarity is served to symbolize deeper attitudinal issues in the sport, including its well-deserved reputation for promoting a culture of silence in the face of issues like sexual violence. According to the report, fighting has fallen by perhaps 200% over the past two decades one estimate. This decline, which has led to a faster and more fun game – alongside a broader push to make hockey more inclusive for marginalized groups – is seen as a positive change.
But fighting is an important part of the hockey code, the unwritten rules of conduct and fair play that players subscribe to in order to govern themselves. Her NHL panel on TNT on Saturday evening discussed Rempe’s hit earlier that night on Ilya Lyubushkin, which sparked the fight with Reaves: “Some people might find that a bit of an indictment, but from an old-fashioned mentality, I’m okay with that hit, but I’m also okay that he had to answering the bell to the other team’s tough guy,” said Paul Bissonnette, himself a former NHL enforcer. “I would have liked to see a penalty, but he answered the bell and that’s why I’m fine.” Hockey, and its analysts and fans, have long straddled the line between the “code” and the codified – between hockey’s morality and everyone else’s, imposed from the outside. And the latter have greatly shaped hockey lately.
For the time being, this discussion between the old and the new way is mainly conducted by voices within the hockey world. But like other major sports, the NHL is still prone to being a flashpoint in the larger culture wars. It came close last year during the All Star break in Florida. An NHL LinkedIn post inviting people to a career fair at the Pathway to Hockey Summit initially specified that participants must identify as members of a marginalized group. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, seized on the event, portraying it as discriminatory against white people. “We do not subscribe to the woke idea that discrimination should be overlooked when applied in a politically popular manner or against a politically unpopular target group,” DeSantis’ spokesperson said.
The return of battle this year in the form of Rempe has the potential to expose hockey’s long-simmering internal existential debate over its resilience to that same febrile framework. After Rempe’s first match – and his first fight – Sean Avery, the former NHL pest and frequent fighter praised Rempe on his podcast, making a point about his role. “So all you awake motherfuckers at home, you think you’ve got it tough. This kid had to go to work on his first day in the NHL, he had to fight another guy in a … gladiator octagon,” Avery said. Right-wing site The Daily Caller Picked up on the comments. “The softies of the world say the new guy can’t do this every night, that it’s ‘untenable’ to fight people every chance you get,” wrote Robert McGreevy, not sarcastically. “Can you weenies close your traps?”
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The old-fashioned theory is that enforcers make hockey safer. When the game gets too hot, combat acts as an outlet that settles the scores according to the code, and in a more orderly manner than increasingly dirty hits or other nonsense throughout the game. Rempe’s fights (the pace of which is indeed unsustainable) could put that theory to the ultimate test. They could, as Avery and others might hope, spark a more in-depth and, let’s face it, political debate about the state of hockey. This means that they can further exacerbate an already tense atmosphere. Or Rempe’s fights could offer a cathartic release, one that prevents the NHL from becoming the center of a broader, unwieldy debate. They could be the proof everyone needs that, despite all the changes, hockey isn’t as soft as they say.