Matt Rempe ‘Earned Respect’ After Nasty Fight
Matt Rempe fought three times in his first five NHL games, which caught the attention of one top-notch enforcer.
Russell LaBounty-USA TODAY Sports - Matt Rempe ‘Earned Respect’ After Nasty FightMatt Rempe took no time to introduce himself to the rest of the NHL.
Upon joining the New York Rangers in February, Rempe got into three fights in his first five games.
One of those fights was against Mathieu Olivier of the Columbus Blue Jackets. While he lost that battle badly, Rempe earned respect from Olivier in the process.
“I’m pretty sure Rempe fought the game before (Feb 24 in Philadelphia) and … we were playing them the next night or whatever, and ‘Olly’ was saying like ‘Listen man, if you need a night (to recover)’ … and I’m pretty sure the story goes that [Rempe] said, ‘No, we’ll go tonight,'” Adam Fantilli said on the Drop the Gloves podcast.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN6tLZ4HWeY[/embed]
“‘Olly’ is one of the scariest human beings when he’s pissed off I’ve ever seen. He definitely got the best of Rempe in that fight. But he had so much respect for Rempe for actually going and dropping them two nights in a row.”
It’s pretty uncommon for players to fight in back-to-back games, but that’s exactly what Rempe decided and was unafraid to do.
Olivier and the rest of the league took notice of Rempe after that and the rest is history.
“I just told him ‘Great tilt yesterday. Hope you’re doing alright’ because that was a tough one. And he said, ‘Yeah, I’m good.’ First shift he came in and asked me, so there’s a lot of respect there for doing that. Kudos to him,” Olivier said after that game. “For lack of a better word, that takes some balls.”
To protect his long term health, Rempe slowed down his fighting for the rest of the season, but there is no doubt that this upcoming year he will be New York’s No. 1 enforcer.
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