Rangers’ Rempe should learn about Probert, Belak, Boogaard
Bob Probert, the heavyweight champion of all NHL heavyweight champions, was dead at the age of 45.
He fought 304 times in a complicated career, with a complicated life. He fought on the ice and off the ice, he fought addiction, spent time behind bars, and left an imprint on anyone and everyone who knew him.
He died of a heart attack, the doctors said, in the summer of 2010. All these years later, some hearts remain broken over the death of Probert.
Probert died one year before the so-termed summer of death that still haunts the hockey world. In those few months of 2011, in a 110day period, the game lost Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak, three extraordinary people, all of them hockey fighters of one kind or another, the kind of men you could never forget, smiling and popular, all dead under murky and challenging circumstances.
Some of the deaths have never truly been explained. But the correlation couldn’t be missed.
Probert, Boogaard, Rypien, Belak all fought in their hockey days. They all fought a lot. Some of them got addicted to pills or cocaine or booze or painkillers or all or any of those substances. Some of them suffered from depression or anxiety. Some may have killed themselves, either leading up to their tragic endings, or certainly contributing to them.
Their lives and their stories mattered then. Their lives and their stories matter now.
At a time when fighting in hockey seemed to be something of an afterthought in the sport — and somebody named Nicholas Deslauriers of the Philadelphia Flyers was leading the NHL in fights — along came the giant-sized sensation that has been Matt Rempe of the New York Rangers. He has played only 10 games in the NHL, just two years out of junior hockey. He fought four times in just over a week, has been suspended for four games already, and looks like he would fight every night and every period if the opportunity was there, or the circumstance deemed it necessary. His throwback style and his giant six-footseven, 240-pound frame, and maybe the team he plays for, have turned him into something of an overnight sensation — a sensation that should have come with caution stickers pasted all over it.
When Probert fought, when Tie Domi fought the most times in NHL history, when Tiger Williams fought, we didn’t know what we know now. We didn’t know about what happened to Boogaard and Rypien and Belak and Steve Montador and what happened to Probert. We didn’t know about all the dangers involved.
We also didn’t know much if anything about CTE, the brain disease that comes from concussions. Probert had CTE. Boogaard had CTE. Montador had CTE.
We didn’t know much about all the damage that can come from hockey fights.
Domi is one of the fortunate ones. He fought more than anyone who has ever played. If he has been damaged, it hasn’t been seen yet. He’s 54 years old and apparently doing just fine. The sport has a certain responsibility to educate Rempe and anyone who wants to be just like him.
The NHL was supposed to have investigated the deaths of 2011 and maybe it did, but the findings of that report were never made public.
In recent years the number of fights seems fewer, but there are still plenty of them. There are just more NHL players fighting fewer times than in the punch-up-days, when every team had its guy and the job was unspoken but obvious.
Fans love fighting. It brings them out of their seats. But what fans don’t get is the opportunity to talk to the families of Probert or Boogaard or anyone of that ilk who made a great living as a tough guy and then paid a deadly price for it.
Somebody needs to talk to Matt Rempe. To tell the stories of Probert or Boogaard or Belak. His team should tell him. Their medical staff. His family. His friends. His agent. The league.
Staying silent on this has never been the right answer. The time for education is now. He doesn’t have to drop his gloves for forced fights, or because there is some unwritten code that has never been properly translated. He should be just fine without the fighting, without the celebrity, without gambling in any way with his brain and his future.
Belak was 35 when he died, Boogaard was 28, Rypien was 27.
Rempe is just 22. He’s trying to build a career for himself. He’s trying to make a difference. It’s a difficult job in a difficult league.
But they can’t let him go forward blindly. There is too much explaining that needs to be done here.