The Rangers-Devils line brawl will go down as one of the highlights of 2023-24

Wednesday night produced a rare sight in the modern NHL: a full-on five-on-five line brawl. In two seconds, there was 130 penalty minutes, five fights and eight ejections.

The line brawl may have stemmed from the last contest these two teams played on March 11, when Matt Remple ignored repeated attempts to fight from Kurtis MacDermid. Later in the game, Rempe caught Devils’ defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler with an elbow that earned him a four-game suspension, and still refused to fight MacDermid.

This time, the towering rookie had no such reservations; the two brawled for over a minute. Remarkably, the ejection was Rempe’s third in three career appearances against New Jersey.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss Wednesday’s line brawl and what it means in the long run for both squads.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Last night, Madison Square Garden, boy did we ever get a tilt. Everybody saw Rempe and MacDermid in the starting lineup and thought, “Okay those two are gonna go,” but my jaw dropped when I saw everybody else drop their gloves.

Frank Seravalli: I love Chris Tierney’s face off the draw when he realizes this was going to be a thing, and he has to grab someone. There’s so many components and layers to this: you’ve got the heavyweight tilt that everyone wanted to see, and by the way, McDermid has more penalty minutes than he does minutes played, which is a feat unto itself.

The rest of the guys squaring off were not necessarily fighters. These are guys who have a ton of fight in them, and I could not give the Devils high enough marks for stepping up at the Garden, because they were pushed around by the Rangers. To me, this was a huge message sent for New Jersey, a team where their season is mostly over, but them saying that they won’t be pushed around anymore.

You can watch the full episode and the rest of the segment here…