NEW YORK — Matt Rempe had no clue something was wrong as he picked himself off the ice following his Oct. 23 fight with the San Jose Sharks’ Ryan Reaves. He got to the penalty box, and he and Reaves told each other “good fight.”
Then Rempe looked down at his left thumb. The adrenaline had blocked out any pain, but immediately he could tell something wasn’t right. He left the penalty box and skated to the Rangers’ dressing room, then found out the thumb was broken in “many places.”
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“It just got tangled up in his jersey (during the fight), and it obviously was kind of in the wrong spot and I was throwing a lot of left jabs,” Rempe said after the Rangers’ 4-1 loss to the Anaheim Ducks on Monday. “I just kept going bang, bang, bang, and I guess I was just kind of breaking it and breaking it.”
That left Rempe with a long road of rehabilitation ahead of him, from power skating without a stick to light stickhandling to eventually joining the team. After nearly two months, he returned to the New York Rangers’ lineup Monday against the Ducks, logging 9:01 of ice time. It was a team low, but coach Mike Sullivan liked what he saw.
“I thought Remps played well under the circumstances,” he said, noting that the forward didn’t get as much practice time as the team would have liked. “I thought he kept his game simple. The one thing about Remps is when he’s in the lineup, he makes an impact. I think he creates anxiety for our opponents, and I think that’s an area where I think he can help us.”
Rempe was also pleased with his effort — with one exception. Ducks defenseman Pavel Mintyukov scored with three seconds left, and he skated by Rempe just before getting the puck. The Rangers forward fired the puck off the end boards in frustration after it bounced out of the net, and he was still beating himself up about the play after the game: “That can’t happen.”
“But other than that, we had played mostly in the O-zone tonight, and we had a lot of chances,” he said. “I thought we were good.”
The Rangers led 16-2 in five-on-five shot attempts with Rempe on the ice, per Natural Stat Trick, and Sullivan gave him a look on the second power-play unit in the second period. Natural Stat Trick credited New York with 81.5 percent of the five-on-five expected goal share with the Taylor Raddysh-Sam Carrick-Rempe line on the ice.
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Sullivan likes what Rempe brings from a forechecking perspective, and the forward had hits on three of his first four shifts. One of them drew the attention of Ducks forward (and often fighter) Ross Johnston, who wanted to go. Rempe, though, said he still can’t fight because he can’t bend his thumb correctly yet.
“I had a big hit and (Johnston) doesn’t know what’s up with the thumb and stuff, and he’s doing his job,” he said. “I was like, ‘Hey I can’t go,’ and he understands that and he’s probably been there before.”
So there was no fight Monday, but Rempe said he’s not deterred from engaging in the future.
“A couple more weeks,” he said of his thumb, “and it’ll be golden.”
Other notes
• Sullivan scratched forward Mika Zibanejad for missing a team meeting. Asked after the game if this was a first-time occurrence, Sullivan declined to get into specifics.
“We believe strongly in a process that we’ve put in place here for our team, and it’s as simple as that,” the coach said, adding that Zibanejad is “an important player for us. He’s a terrific player and he’s a terrific person.”
• The Rangers’ power play woes continued. They went zero-for-four and allowed a shorthanded goal that occurred right at the end of a brief five-on-three advantage. Former Rangers captain Jacob Trouba picked up a secondary assist on the goal, which was scored by Jackson LaCombe.
• Matthew Robertson had the lone Rangers tally. He’s been earning more and more of Sullivan’s trust, logging 17:27 against the Ducks — above his season average of 16:09 — and cracked 20 minutes for only the second time in his career Saturday against the Montreal Canadiens.
This news was originally published on this post .
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