Matt Rempe’s latest brawl doesn’t change his Rangers reality

Matt Rempe’s ice time won’t be going up any more on Friday.

The Rangers’ rowdy rookie is slated to be a healthy scratch against the Red Wings, which will count as his fourth time watching from the press box in the last five games. 

This after Rempe made an incredibly brief return to the lineup on Wednesday, when the Rangers and Devils opened their fourth and final meeting of the season with a five-on-five line brawl that had been building all season. 

The 6-foot-8 1/2 forward was on the ice for all of two seconds before he dropped the gloves with Kurtis MacDermid. They danced for about a minute, with the Devils enforcer getting a few extra shots in there. 

Since Jimmy Vesey was the first to engage with the Devils’ Curtis Lazar, every other Ranger on the ice — Rempe, Barclay Goodrow, Jacob Trouba and K’Andre Miller — was ejected for secondary fighting. 

“I thought we were going to have a good five minutes in there with the fellas, we were all going to meet and huddle up there, getting cozy and having a good time, but they came over and said that we were gone,” Rempe said after an optional practice on Thursday. ‘’Are you kidding me?’ I didn’t know that was the rule, and I was like, damn, TOI [time on ice] didn’t go up that game. It was tough, two seconds, but we just fired the crowd up and we got off and it was cool.”