COLUMBUS, Ohio - Scott Sabourin didn’t need much convincing that a fight was coming Thursday night. Mathieu Olivier was ready to go on the opening shift, and Sabourin knew the matchup with one of the NHL’s most feared fighters was sitting there waiting for him.
He just wasn’t in a hurry to take it.
“Nah, not now,” Sabourin told Olivier.
That delay turned into a rain check, and it paid off for the Lightning. After Columbus forward Matthew Knies scored a power-play goal to tie the game 1-1 midway through the first period, Sabourin and Olivier met at center ice on the next faceoff and went at it in a bout that had both players bloodied.
“It was a good time to get a spark,” Sabourin said. “I wanted to kind of wait for something to happen in the game where it was going to kind of be in favor of our team. So we talked about it then, on that second draw, and it seemed like a good time to do it.”
Sabourin has built his game around moments like that. With 93 fights across 14 pro seasons, he knows exactly where he can tilt a game, and this offseason he tried to sharpen that edge.
After his first year with the Lightning, he went back to Ottawa and started taking boxing classes at Monette Martial Arts, a gym that specializes in Muay Thai. It was his first formal fighting training, and he sparred with some of the gym’s top fighters.
The work showed against Olivier, who is two inches shorter but 22 pounds heavier. Sabourin leaned on his defense first, letting Olivier swing and using his left arm to absorb the punishment until he could grab the jersey and start firing back with heavy left hands.
“He definitely stayed on the offense for a long time there to start, so I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to get my chance to start throwing punches,” Sabourin said. “But eventually, I was able to kind of, you know, settle him down, get a grip and switch over to my left hand and get a couple in on him.
He’s one of the toughest in the league, and everyone knows that. So just trying to keep my chin safe and land a couple where I can.”
The fight gave Tampa Bay a jolt. Sabourin headed to the bench for a nose repair and even got an emphatic pat on the back from coach Jon Cooper on his way down the tunnel. Brandon Hagel, who finished with two goals and an assist, said the moment lifted the whole group.
“It’s unreal,” Hagel said. “That’s a tough guy over there.
I think everyone knows that in the league. And for a guy to step on the ice and be able to do that, he’s probably a little tired, not much sleep, played a game the night before.
If he can do that, then I think all the other guys can just give us a little bit more effort, and I think that wakes you up a little bit. That’s the type of characters we have in this dressing room.”
Jeff Viel answered with a fight of his own against Columbus forward Ryan Lomberg, and from that point until the Lightning went ahead 3-1 with just under eight minutes left, Tampa Bay outshot the Blue Jackets 19-10. Charle-Edouard D’Astous said the edge from the fights carried straight into the game.
“I think it gave us a lot of energy,” D’Astous said. “After that, we just took over.”
Sabourin said the offseason work has made him more comfortable in those situations, especially the defensive side of fighting - blocking punches, reading an opponent and finding cleaner openings. Earlier this season, he used that approach against Islanders defenseman Logan Stanley, waiting out the 6-foot-7 blueliner’s long right hands before unloading a combination that caught Stanley off guard and ended with Sabourin taking him to the ice.
For Sabourin, who has appeared in just six of the Lightning’s 19 games, the training has made him more useful when he’s in the lineup. He sees it as part of his job, and now he feels better equipped to do it.
“For someone who’s been fighting for 17 years through my junior period of pro, I’ve never really had formal training,” Sabourin said, “so it was like, all right, well, obviously this is gonna happen in my game. I might as well get better at it and clean some things up.”
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