nitrogenIt finally — and inevitably — happened Saturday night at the start of the third quarter in Toronto. Maple Leafs tough guy Ryan Reaves goes up against burly rookie Matt Rempe of the New York Rangers in center ice. Lempey, a 6-foot-7, 240-pound center, has one goal and one assist in his first seven games in the NHL. He also had 37 penalty minutes, five more than he actually played on the ice. He’s what most people call an “enforcer” — a role that has more or less been phased out of the NHL in recent years. That’s not to say there aren’t still people willing to ditch the gloves or play a game that’s more physical than skillful — every team has at least one of those people. But Rempe is doing something different.
Lempey has been fighting most of the time so far. For some reason, this kind of thing hasn’t happened in the NHL in years. For one, people are dying. In 2011, enforcers Derek Boogaard, Wade Belak and Rick Rypien died on the ice within just a few months of each other. Become a catalyst for change. In the years since, the accusations against the so-called “thugs” have intensified. For example, multiple studies have linked fighting to CTE — though NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman still disputes the link. But around the same time, another change occurred in hockey: analytics. In recent years, every player and prospect has been subjected to intensive data-based analysis, with teams constantly looking for quantifiable metrics — as well as human scouting reports — to chart a path to victory. Executives will not easily adapt to this new matrix. They rarely generate points and often don’t skate well or fast enough, let alone create things like consistently successful runs into the zone.
Then there is the cultural aspect. While the NHL and hockey more generally consider the toll on the health of officiating personnel, there is also public opposition to fighting being a spectacle, especially at the elite level. Surveys over the past decade have shown that Canadian fans remain divided over an outright ban on fighting in professional hockey, but its relatively brutal behavior is emblematic of deeper attitudinal problems in the sport, including its reputation for cultivating silence within the game reputation earned by culture. Confronting things like sexual assault. The number of fights has decreased over the past decade or so – according to one study, there were 645 fights in 2010-11 and an estimated 282 this season. That decline, which has resulted in a faster, more entertaining game — along with a broader push for hockey to be more inclusive of marginalized groups — is seen as a positive change.
But fighting is a key part of hockey’s “code,” the unwritten rules of conduct and fair play that players follow to govern themselves. On Saturday night’s TNT show, the NHL panel discussed Lemper’s hit on Ilya Lyubushkin earlier that night that sparked the fight with Reeves, “Some may think It’s a little bit of an accusation, but from an old-school mentality, I don’t have a problem with the hit.” “But I also agree that he has to answer for the tough guy on the other team,” said former NHL enforcer Paul Bissonnette said. “I would have liked to see a penalty but he rang the bell and that’s why I was fine. ” Hockey, its analysts and fans, have long walked the line between “code” and codification — between hockey ethics and those imposed from the outside by others. The latter has had a big impact on hockey lately.
Currently, the debate between old and new ways is largely driven by voices within hockey. But the NHL, like other major sports, remains prone to becoming a flashpoint in larger culture wars. That mark came close during last year’s All-Star Game in Florida. An NHL LinkedIn post inviting people to its “Road to Hockey Summit” job fair initially explicitly required participants to prove they were members of a marginalized group. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis seized on the incident, describing it as discrimination against white people. “We do not abide by the notion that discrimination should be ignored if it is done in a politically popular way or against politically unpopular groups,” a spokesman for DeSantis said.
The fight that returns this year in the form of Lempey threatens to expose a long-simmering existential debate within hockey about how resilient the game is to the same intense framework. Former NHL pest and frequent boxer Sean Avery praised Rempe on his podcast after his first game and after his first game, giving perspective on his character. “So all you assholes out there waking up at home, you all think you’re having a hard time. This kid has to go to work on his first day in the NHL and he has to fight another guy in…the Gladiator Octagon,” Avery said. The comments were noted by the right-wing website The Daily Caller. “The weaklings of the world are saying that rookies can’t do this every night and that fighting someone every chance they get is ‘unsustainable,'” Robert McGreevey wrote, without irony. “Can you little guys close your trap?”
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The old-school theory is that enforcers make hockey safer. If the game gets too hot, combat acts as a release valve, settling points based on code and being more orderly than the increasingly filthy hitting or other in-game nonsense. The battle at Lempe (at a pace that is truly unsustainable) may provide the ultimate test of this theory. As Ivery and others hope, they could spark a more heated, let’s face it, political debate about the current state of hockey. That is, they may make an already tense atmosphere worse. Or, Lempey’s game could provide a catharsis that saves the NHL from becoming the focus of a wider, more intractable debate. They could be the proof everyone needs that despite these changes, hockey isn’t as soft as they say.
