Matt Rempe’s ice time won’t be going up any more on Friday.
The Rangers’ rowdy rookie is slated to be a healthy scratch against the Red Wings, which will count as his fourth time watching from the press box in the last five games.
This after Rempe made an incredibly brief return to the lineup on Wednesday, when the Rangers and Devils opened their fourth and final meeting of the season with a five-on-five line brawl that had been building all season.
Matt Rempe was ejected for his fight with Kurtis MacDermid just two seconds in to Wednesday’s game. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post The 6-foot-8 1/2 forward was on the ice for all of two seconds before he dropped the gloves with Kurtis MacDermid. They danced for about a minute, with the Devils enforcer getting a few extra shots in there.
Since Jimmy Vesey was the first to engage with the Devils’ Curtis Lazar, every other Ranger on the ice — Rempe, Barclay Goodrow, Jacob Trouba and K’Andre Miller — was ejected for secondary fighting.
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“I thought we were going to have a good five minutes in there with the fellas, we were all going to meet and huddle up there, getting cozy and having a good time, but they came over and said that we were gone,” Rempe said after an optional practice on Thursday. ‘’Are you kidding me?’ I didn’t know that was the rule, and I was like, damn, TOI [time on ice] didn’t go up that game. It was tough, two seconds, but we just fired the crowd up and we got off and it was cool.”
The two seconds Rempe spent on the ice not fighting on Wednesday brought his career TOI to 76 minutes through 14 games.
Averaging 5:26 a game, Rempe has collected one goal, one assist and 69 penalty minutes.
Rempe, of course, was at the heart of the feud between the Rangers and Devils this season, after the 21-year-old injured two of the Devils players in Nathan Bastian and Jonas Siegenthaler.
The high-elbowed hit on the latter of the two earned Rempe a four-game suspension.
Rangers center Matt Rempe #73 looks over at New Jersey Devils defenseman Kurtis MacDermid #23 as he waits for the puck to drop. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post In three career games against the Devils, Rempe has totaled 47 penalty minutes and three ejections in 5:03 of ice time.
He’s the first player in NHL history to get thrown out of all three of his first games against a single franchise.
