Rangers’ Matt Rempe a ‘different fighter’ after Georges Laraque fight camp
NY Post
To Georges Laraque, fighting in the NHL is a brotherhood.
So when Matt Rempe went on a bout bender during his first days in the league, putting what some believe to be a dying role in hockey in the New York City limelight, Laraque, the former longtime NHL enforcer — like everyone else — watched intently.
He saw the Rangers rookie hold his own against Islanders heavyweight Matt Martin in front of 79,690 fans at MetLife Stadium.
Then looked on as Rempe got clocked a few times by Flyers face-puncher Nicolas Deslauriers and later taken down by Blue Jackets tough guy Mathieu Olivier.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s getting hit way too much because he has no technique,’ ” Laraque recalled to The Post in a recent phone call. “And then after a few fights, his face, he had black eyes and everything. After [the] Olivier [fight], when it kind of went a bit bad, I was like, ‘OK, I have to reach out to him.’ Because he was so good for the league.”
The two exchanged a series of messages and Laraque offered up what he learned across 695 career games and 159 fights (according to hockeyfights.com) in the best way that text communication would allow.
With the Yankees on an impressive run of mostly correct decisions, there’s some reason to leave them alone and just let the best team in the American League continue to roll. But they did raise serious doubt and leave room for suggestions (and even ridicule) following maybe the most inexplicable decision of this season, or any season.
The Giants have never been 0-2 under Brian Daboll, until now. They were 2-0 and flying high in 2022 and 1-1 after a rousing comeback in Arizona in 2023. So, this represents a low point as far as early-season difficulties for Daboll and the Giants. They had no business beating the Vikings in the opener and no business losing to the Commanders in Week 2. But here they are.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Harrison Butker kept making a lonely walk to midfield after each quarter Sunday to check on the direction of the wind, which tends to swirl inside Arrowhead Stadium. He did it one last time during the 2-minute warning, when his Chiefs were trailing the Bengals by two and trying to give him a winning field-goal attempt.