Hulking Adam Edstrom, Matt Rempe having big Rangers effect
This wasn’t a trade in the conventional sense, but when the Rangers exchanged Nick Bonino and Tyler Pitlick for Adam Edstrom and Matt Rempe with internal organizational moves, the dynamic shifted just as surely as if the club had gone out onto the market to import a missing piece or two.
For the promotions of the 23-year-old, 6-foot-7 Edstrom and the 21-year-old 6-8 ¹/₂ Rempe represented a clear indication that the hierarchy believed the Blueshirts were in need of added size, strength, physicality and attitude.
And indeed, the two young’uns are receiving pre-deadline auditions that will go a, uh, long way in determining GM Chris Drury’s course of action leading up to the 3 p.m. bell on March 8 that is just two weeks away.
The Wingspan Brothers have been in the lineup for the past three victories of the Rangers’ heater that reached nine games with Thursday’s 5-1 beatdown of the Devils on the ice, in the alleys and on the scoreboard. Their play has been contagious.
“Definitely. You watch those two play, they’re going all out, they’re playing simple and they’re playing hard,” Braden Schneider told The Post. “I definitely think that when you see Remps go out there on his first shift and blows someone up, it gets you going and makes everyone on the bench excited.
“Obviously you don’t want to see anyone get hurt, but he’s bringing his all and I think it definitely trickles down and makes you want to up your game and bring that intensity and physicality to it.”
The game was 2:25 old and Rempe had been on for 13 seconds when he steamrolled down the right wall and caught Nathan Bastian in the head with his right arm that was low and tucked to the body. Bastian, listed at 6-4, went down, dazed from the blow that seemed unintentional. Contact was unavoidable unless Rempe altered his course and why in the world was that his obligation.
Nevertheless, Rempe was assessed a match penalty that ended his night. It should be rescinded when league officials take another look at it.
The blow, though, established the tone of the game. The Rangers killed the five-minute penalty as part of a 5-for-5 night while shorthanded 11:52 as they took pounds of flesh wherever the opportunity presented itself. The Blueshirts did some flexing in this one against a Devils team that was in complete disarray.
Edstrom was the sixth-round, 161st-overall selection of the 2019 draft. Rempe became the Blueshirts’ sixth-round, 165th-overall pick in 2020. They are cracked mirror images, Edstrom a native of Sweden with Rempe hailing from Calgary.
And if franchise history is littered with examples of the Rangers rushing prospects, here are two examples of the organization nurturing and molding youngsters who might have been on the periphery of the prospect pool and discarded.
Over the short term, the kids have made an impact. They get the puck in deep. They tend to run into anything that moves. There’s a kind of chaos created when they’re out there even if ice time is precious with head coach Peter Laviolette relying ever increasingly on his marquee athletes to get the team across the finish line.
Edstrom is averaging 9:09 of ice time while Rempe is at 3:16 per game, skewed a tad by Thursday’s 13-second appearance. But these are no small parts to the team. Edstrom has been credited with 19 hits and Rempe with eight (not including the illegal blow in Newark.)
These are Rangers?
These are Rangers.
“I think they add a layer and the depth of [physicality],” Laviolette said. “When you have one or two or three guys that hit and you add two more, you’ve got five or six now that are really good at physical contact.”
Bonino and Pitlick were two of the veteran, minimum salary-type free agents signed on July 1 by Drury when the club was operating under an extreme cap squeeze while needing to keep as much space on hand in order to not lose restricted free agents Alexis Lafreniere and K’Andre Miller.
Drury’s message to agents leading up to last July 1 was simple. The GM told them he had a finite number of slots to fill at around $800,000 for one year. It was first-come, first-served just the way it is at a deli counter. Bonino, Pitlick, Blake Wheeler, Alex Belzile, Riley Nash, Anton Blidh (and defenseman Erik Gustafsson) punched their tickets and Drury was able to keep Miller and Lafreniere without much fuss or muss.
But though the Rangers blasted out of the gate at 18-4-1, fissures became evident through the 11-12-2 stretch from Dec. 5 through Jan. 26 that preceded this heater. Bonino and Pitlick, who had been bottom-six staples, became place-holders in the internal exchange in which the Blueshirts got much younger, much bigger and more physical.
When the Rangers take aim at tying the franchise record for consecutive wins in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon, the hierarchy will have five games before the deadline to measure Edstrom and Rempe and get a better handle on whether they can be counted on for the playoffs or whether the organization will have to look elsewhere for size and strength.
So far, so big.
