Rempe Opens Camp on IR, Still No Timeline

Training camp is here and Matt Rempe isn't in it, at least not in any full capacity. He's been on injured reserve since late July, and the Rangers have yet to offer any indication of when that changes. I wrote about this on August 30 and nothing has moved since — which is itself the update.

Worth remembering how the season ended for him. His ice time dropped sharply in the final 10 games of 2025-26, falling from 11.4 to 8.0 minutes a night — a cliff that came right before the IR placement and raises a reasonable question about whether he was already compromised in April. The Rangers closed that stretch 6-4, so the team found ways to function, but the forward group around him has been rebuilt considerably since then.

The new additions — Dorofeyev, Bjorkstrand, Tolvanen — address depth on paper, and Taylor Raddysh's expanded role down the stretch last spring gave the coaching staff at least one internal option to lean on. But Rempe's absence is a different kind of hole than a scoring one. He fills a specific role, and the offseason additions weren't designed with him in mind as a missing piece. They were depth moves. His return, whenever it comes, is a separate question the roster isn't quite built to answer in the meantime.