Jordan Binnington frantically craned his neck and shifted from right to left, looking like a young boy trying to get a better view of a parade.
Binnington isn’t a young boy, of course. He’s a 30-year-old Stanley Cup-winning goaltender for the St. Louis Blues. However, on this night, March 9 against the New York Rangers, Binnington appeared just as impatient and frustrated as the aforementioned youth as he tried to get a look at the play in his own zone with Blueshirts giant Matt Rempe parked directly in front of him.
Rempe’s 6-foot-7, 241-pound frame might as well have been a tree or a support beam at an old-time sports arena planted in the crease. Binnington’s figurative seat for the action in front of him came with an obstructed view, one that was all but immovable.
The Rangers went on to a 4-0 victory as Rempe’s incredibly eventful first 10 games in the NHL continued to bring new dimensions to the Blueshirts that they desperately need. One of them is his massive net-front presence, the 21-year-old able to screen goaltenders and wreak havoc around the opposing crease, with defenseman seeming largely powerless to move him.
Rempe’s fight-filled start drew the headlines in first taste of the NHL, but his value to the Rangers has gone well beyond his intimidating presence. His hitting, surprisingly effective skating and forecheck game have been a net positive for the Blueshirts, even if his eager aggressiveness (the New Jersey Devils would call it dirty play) earned him a four-game suspension for an elbow to the head of Devils defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler in a 3-1 victory March 11.
If the Rangers can get the rookie to adopt some discipline before the end of the regular season, they can’t afford to deprive themselves of a player whose style could be a major factor in the postseason. If the loose-cannon element of Rempe’s on-ice persona persists, however, the Blueshirts have another option who can approximate some of what Rempe has brought to the roster for the Metropolitan Division leaders who are looking to make a deep playoff run.
Rempe’s Presence Has Had Roster-Wide Impact on Rangers
Rempe’s first career goal came against the Philadelphia Flyers on Feb. 24, a result of doing exactly what he later did against the Blues: anchored in front of goalie Samuel Ersson, a shot from linemate Barclay Goodrow hit Rempe’s skate and skipped into the net. It wasn’t pretty. Rempe and the Rangers were happy to take it.
He just missed his second goal in the most recent matchup with the Devils, ringing a Goodrow feed off the post and apparently into the net before a replay determined that the puck didn’t cross the line. The waived-off tally, though, came from in close, with Rempe again attacking the net, his height and huge size presenting what to this point looks like an unsolvable problem for other teams when the Calgary native decides he wants to go to the crease.
The Rangers are 7-2-1 with Rempe in the lineup. They’ve scored four goals and given up one when he’s been on at 5-on-5. The Blueshirts have a 54.9 expected goal share while outchancing opponents 29-17, including 10-5 in high-danger chances, with the guy who might look more at home on the Madison Square Garden basketball court on the ice at even strength.
When Rempe finishes his suspension March 17, the expectation would be that coach Peter Laviolette gets him right back in there for a home matchup with the Winnipeg Jets two days later.
“It’s over. He can learn from it, and we’ll miss him while he was gone,” Laviolette said. “He was playing another pretty good game for us, and being really effective with what he does out on the ice.
“There’s been a lot around him since he’s come on to our team and into the league, and I guess that you take an opportunity like this and just try to get better from it.”
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Laviolette sounded like a coach who can’t wait for Rempe’s ban to end, rather than one exasperated by an overly excited first-year forward trying to make a name for himself. While Rempe’s surprising skill and positive effect on the Rangers’ play would be the main reasons he’d earn a playoff assignment, his figurative shadow has extended beyond himself, with the Blueshirts appearing to have become a more physical, edgy outfit since Rempe arrived.
Current Toronto Maple Leafs enforcer Ryan Reaves, who Rempe fought March 2, was a factor for the Blueshirts in the first two rounds of the 2022 playoffs, when he delivered crushing hits and was constantly up in the faces of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Carolina Hurricanes. The Rangers won both series. Reaves’ swagger and nastiness proved infectious for his teammates that season. Could Rempe deliver a repeat performance into the 2024 postseason?
It seems clear Laviolette wants to find out, his words confirming his appreciation for Rempe’s contributions in what appears to be a path for the big guy to potentially play a key role well into the spring.
As the coach mentioned, however, the sideshow atmosphere that seems to accompany Rempe is a concern. Everything he does seems to draw attention, the latest incident drawing an angry lecture from New Jersey enforcer Kurtis MacDermid on manhood after Rempe refused multiple invitations to fight him, and then mockingly waved goodbye to MacDermid and the Devils bench after being ejected for the hit on Siegenthaler.
What if it all becomes too much, and Rempe’s outsized notoriety overwhelms him to the point that his effectiveness wanes? Well, the Rangers do have the anti-Rempe – in personality, not in physical measurements, that is.
Edstrom’s Contributions Were Similar to Rempe’s
Not long before Rempemania hit, there was more measured interest and optimism about the club’s other gargantuan rookie winger – those sentiments matching the personality of the player. Adam Edstrom, 6-7 and 234 pounds, evoked wonder over his uncommonly good skating, size and sound all-around game, with Laviolette talking with moderated excitement over the chance to slowly work the native of Karlstad, Sweden, into higher-leverage situations. Edstrom had made a memorable NHL debut Dec. 15, scoring a goal in the waning seconds of a 5-1 victory over the Anaheim Ducks at Madison Square Garden.
Edstrom, whose on- and off-ice ways tend to be quiet and reserved and not nearly as noticeable as Rempe’s, was recalled for a Feb. 12 game against the Calgary Flames and became a fourth-line regular. Rempe arrived six days later, and for eight contests, the Rangers had a Twin Towers fourth forward unit, the hulking former sixth-round draft picks dwarfing linemate Goodrow, who’s 6-2 and 204 pounds.
Like Rempe, Edstrom delivered hits (30 in 11 games), forechecking and, when teamed with Rempe and Goodrow over 24:37 in those eight games, net positive play in the form of a 55.6 expected goal share – although less-than-impressive individual underlying metrics suggest Edstrom was more or less pulled along by his two linemates, albeit over relatively small sample sizes. The new guys, though, changed the dynamic and shook up the lineup, the Rangers adopting a heavier persona that opponents suddenly needed to deal with. In the city of skyscrapers, the pair felt like a natural fit.
Then the March 8 trade deadline drew close, the Rangers acquired forwards Alex Wennberg and Jack Roslovic, and the 23-year-old Edstrom was the odd man out, sent back Hartford of the American Hockey League that day.
Though Edstrom wasn’t as good as Rempe in the early days of his NHL career, the Rangers will need his size and power if Rempe can’t provide it going forward. Edstrom scored his second goal of the season against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Feb. 25, an ugly one on a drive to the net that’s exactly what the Rangers are looking for.
Rempe, Edstrom Provide What Rangers Are Often Missing in Playoffs
Both players create space for teammates like no one else in the lineup can. Both are extremely difficult to force away from the dirty areas around the net, and both play a style that becomes more consequential in the postseason. Although Edstrom doesn’t screen the goaltender the way Rempe does, he drives to the goalmouth, can overpower opponents along the walls and uses his long reach expertly in all three zones.
The element they bring has been absent far too often for the Rangers in the playoffs, the Blueshirts’ highly-skilled top-six forwards often failing to produce when kept out of the middle and away from the crease, generally to disastrous results (their 2022 six-game Eastern Conference Final loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning comes to mind). In fact, the lack of toughness, size and power sometimes seems a part of the organizational DNA, stretching back through franchise history. Rempe in particular, and Edstrom, could help them change that dynamic this season.
Reassembling the Brobdingnagian fourth line of Edstrom-Goodrow-Rempe for the playoffs, despite its success, is probably a bridge too far. Jimmy Vesey isn’t coming out of the lineup. Neither are third-line wingers Will Cuylle or Kaapo Kakko. Rempe’s likely to draw the bottom-line assignment if he can maintain his level of play once he returns, but the Blueshirts can’t afford not to have either Rempe or Edstrom in the lineup when the puck drops on their first-round playoff series next month.
In the postseason, close-in garbage goals are beautiful and series are so often won and lost amidst the increasingly intense clashes in front of the opposing goaltender. In that vein, it’s probably safe to say that Rempe or Edstrom present a challenge for opponents unique to the current NHL. Laviolette would be foolish not to plan on leveraging that advantage by deploying at least one of the gigantic wingers for the postseason battles to come.
