This is a Barry Blog. That's a blog for Barry, if it wasn't clear. If the average Defector reader isn't interested in a blog about a midseason blowout featuring two teams outside of the playoff picture, well, too bad. Go write a Becky Blog, or whatever your name is. Because I need to record this for posterity. Tuesday night, I had the best seats I've ever had to a hockey game in my life, and I saw a Matt Rempe goal. May as well tell me not to blog a total solar eclipse!
Thanks to benefactors who shall go unnamed, because I don't know Lauren's parents' names, a Defector contingent of two attended a 5-0 Rangers win over the Senators that felt even more lopsided than that thanks to two disallowed New York goals. We were directly behind the Ottawa net, four rows back. (I spammed our work chat with semi-blurry photos of local sentimental favorite Artem Zub. "Whoa," responded Samer with rude and uncharacteristic sarcasm. "Big game," responded Ray with fully characteristic sarcasm.) Lauren, with typical Red Wings fan bravado, taunted me about the sub-Cup banners in the MSG rafters—the "mere" division titles, the Billy Joel sellouts, the fucking Phish banner.
It was easily the closest I've ever been to the ice as a fan: I could see players' facial expressions; the sound of pucks striking the glass was startling; the rink, which looks so big on television, feels claustrophobically small at ice level. It's a wonder anyone's able to carry the puck for more than half a second before getting crushed. It's a miracle that a goalie has ever made a single save. I've always told the hockey-curious that the game is entirely different live than it is on TV—the former is light-years better—and it's another game entirely in the 100s, compared to the usual 400 level. The lesson here, as I suppose the lesson usually is, is that it'd be real nice to be rich.
Ah, but all the money in the world can't buy an experience like this: Matt Rempe, all 6-foot-8 of him, all 106 career penalty minutes in 29 games of him, all one previous career goal of him—streaking directly toward me, puck on his stick, going forehand-backhand to beat Anton Forsberg. Rempe has dangles? No one had a better seat in the house for this man-biting-dog highlight.
It came off a nifty feed from Adam Edstrom, the similarly tall, similarly marginally skilled forward who is Rempe's linemate and close pal. “It’s pretty exciting, me and Eddy—one of my best buddies—to connect like that,” he said. But of course the finish was all anyone wanted to talk about. Those were some legitimately silky mitts from the big boy; who knew he had it in him? Rempe himself, maybe. From my vantage point I was able to see his celebration immediately after the goal, which doesn't appear to have been captured on video: a cupped hand to his ear, as if to soak in, or perhaps demand, the willing crowd's roar.
This was Good Rempe, as opposed to the more familiar Bad Rempe who keeps getting suspended. It's been mostly Good Rempe lately; the Rangers, once all but dead, are 5-0-2 since he returned to the lineup following an eight-game ban. He was rewarded Tuesday with 9:12 of ice time, his highest total since before his last AHL stint. He doesn't need to score goals to be Good Rempe; he was a huge presence in the second half of this game, as the Senators and especially frustrator-general Brady Tkachuk tried to make things chippy. Tkachuk successfully took a dive and drew a penalty, and from that moment Peter Laviolette started rolling Rempe out there every time Tkachuk was on the ice, to keep him honest. If shadowing the nefarious younger Tkachuk meant giving Rempe power play time, well, that's the cost of justice.
Tkachuk managed to cause trouble anyway. He ended up in the crease, shaking up goalie Igor Shesterkin, and that progressed to a scrum behind the net. After some scuffle consolidation, Tkachuk attempted to engage with a Ranger who was already spoken for, so Shesterkin snapped and went after Tkachuk himself.
Shesterkin kept his gear on, even though Tkachuk wanted to go—he said later that if he wasn't pitching a shutout, he might've engaged and taken the ensuing ejection. Rempe's quick arrival made sure the goalie's temptation passed.
"I don’t really enjoy that because I was between the pipe and him,” Shesterkin said. “I didn’t want to jump there, but I saw he got in between our guy and their guy, so I just tried to hold him, but he wanted to fight. It’s tough for me because I cannot drop my gloves—if I do that, I go to the locker room. If I gave up one [goal] I could go fight.”
It was a deliriously entertaining game for a home fan, even if it'll likely mean nothing in the grand scheme. But as I struggled to fall asleep, still hyperactive from that common malady, Tkachuk-inspired bloodlust, I thought some more on precisely that aspect of it: the entertainment. I've long and firmly believed that championships are secondary to contention in a fulfilling fandom. Sports are an entertainment product, and happiness is maximized when your team wins more often than it loses over the 17 Sundays or 162 game days of a season. Yes, titles are the ultimate, but they're not necessary. Sustained stretches of competitiveness matter much more to my daily life and mood. It's why my Rangers fandom has been more gratifying than, say, my New York Giants fandom over the last two decades, even though the latter has a pair of Super Bowls: Give me a team that makes the playoff most years instead of one that occasionally goes all the way then sucks shit the rest of the time. It's something I worried about as the Rangers considered blowing up their core earlier this season. No, the current iteration isn't likely to win a Stanley Cup. But isn't there value in icing a roster that more often than not will send fans home happy on a random, icy Tuesday in January?
Still, I wouldn't mind a Cup sometime. If only to bump that damn Phish banner out of the rafters.
