Matt Rempe

Last Season

One goal and no assists in 26 games — one point, minus-four, at 8:36 a night with 11 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

Almost none, and the shot chart is a curiosity worth printing. Seventy-nine per cent of his twenty-four unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, with a median of fourteen — the highest inside share of any player in this edition.

That is not a skill. It is a man who is six foot nine standing in the crease, because there is nowhere else on the ice he can be useful.

Eleven points in 85 career games.

The Physical Game

Six foot nine and 261 pounds — the largest player in this book by four inches and sixteen pounds, and the entire reason he has an NHL job.

He fights. That is the role, it is stated plainly by everyone involved, and he is genuinely intimidating in a way almost nobody left in the league is.

The skating is what limits him to eight and a half minutes: he cannot forecheck at NHL pace and cannot recover if the play turns.

The Intangibles

Forty-nine point nine per cent of the expected goals, 52nd percentile, in 217 minutes — a sample too small to mean anything.

He is 24, a hundred and sixty-fifth overall pick, and the clearest surviving example of a job this book keeps describing as extinct. Greer scores seventeen, Olivier scores fifteen, Kastelic scores twelve. Rempe scored one.

That is the difference between the modern version of the role and the one it replaced, and Rempe is the last of the second kind.