The Bruins could be shopping one of their goalies, why the Oilers should bring back Jack Campbell and guess who snubbed Canucks' Thatcher Demko?
Is having 21-year-old Matt Rempe drop the gloves practically every time he steps onto the ice necessarily a good thing for the NHL?
It is a question currently being debated by hockey fans across social media. For old-school types, the arrival of the 6-foot-8 and 240-pound Rempe is sort of like finding a long lost Don Cherry Rock 'em Sock 'em video at a garage sale. Or, as some new-school fans have suggested, having scientists discover a living, breathing dinosaur.
After all, enforcers like Rempe were supposed to be extinct. At the very least, there numbers were dwindling.
And yet, since dropping the gloves on his first-ever NHL shift with Matt Martin, the New York Rangers rookie has continued to go big-game hunting against heavy-weight contenders such as Philadelphia's Nicolas Deslauriers and Columbus' Mathieu Olivier.
Not all the fights have been wins. But in the process, he's earned a win for keeping fighting in the game. Not that it was going anywhere.
According to hockeyfights.com, there have been 219 fights in the league so far this season. At that pace, there should be 312 fights by the end of the year, which is slightly down from 334 fights last year.
But forget the numbers. The real test is who is emplying the fighters are located. And as it stands, pretty much every Stanley Cup contender has a Rempe — or a lesser version of him — on its roster. There's Tanner Jeannot in Tampa Bay, Ryan Lomberg in Florida and Corey Perry in Edmonton. The Leafs thought fighting was so valuable that they signed not only Ryan Reaves, but also Max Domi last summer.
In other words, like it or not, the dinosaurs are back in the NHL.
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