Rempe Still on IR, and the Forward Depth Question Hasn't Gone Away

Matt Rempe is on injured reserve with training camp on the horizon, and the circumstances around his final weeks of last season don't make the timeline feel any less uncertain. His ice time dropped from 11.4 minutes a game to 8.0 over the Rangers' final 10 games — a 29% decline that, in retrospect, reads less like a coaching decision and more like a player being managed through something. He never fully recovered that role before the season ended.

The Rangers went 6-4 in those final 10 games and tightened defensively, so the stretch wasn't a lost cause. But Rempe's diminished presence was part of the texture of it. Taylor Raddysh, meanwhile, saw his ice time climb sharply in that same window — the coaching staff was clearly sorting through options at the bottom of the forward group, and Raddysh came out of it looking like someone they wanted to know more about.

The offseason addressed a lot of things. Goaltending, the blue line, a scoring upgrade in Pavel Dorofeyev — the new front office under Quentin Dolan has been busy. Forward depth at the physical end of the roster is the piece that hasn't been touched, and Rempe's IR status is the reason that matters. My read is that if he's not cleared well before camp opens, this becomes a real problem rather than a background concern.