Tampa Bay Lightning forward Scott Sabourin, officially, has never appeared in a game that mattered on the Florida Panthers' home ice.
The journeyman forward has faced the Panthers three times, twice at home when he played for Ottawa, once at home when he played for San Jose. His stats from those three games: zero goals, zero assists, zero penalty minutes, one shot on goal and the Panthers went 3-0-0 in those contests by a combined score of 17-5.
Which
begs the question: Why will most Panthers fans know his name when Tampa Bay comes across the state to Sunrise on Saturday?
Oct. 4 would be why.
That was the preseason game that shall not be forgotten in this Lightning-Panthers rivalry, a game that degenerated into something so ridiculous that someone wound up getting an assist after being ejected — the refs were so busy ejecting people that night that nobody actually told Florida's Niko Mikkola he'd been dismissed from the contest, so a goal he contributed to had to be taken off the scoreboard many minutes later.
“Obviously, we all saw what was there," Panthers defenseman Jeff Petry said.
All the absurdity that night started when Sabourin, who was called up from the AHL for the game, got onto the ice for his first and only shift and jumped Florida's Aaron Ekblad in what was perceived to be retaliatory for something that happened in another preseason game that week.
The totals from that night: 65 penalties, 13 game misconducts, 312 penalty minutes, six games worth of suspensions being issued (four to Sabourin, two to Lightning defenseman J.J. Moser) and $176,302.10 in fines and forfeited salary for the Lightning alone — including a $100,000 fine to the organization and a $25,000 fine to coach Jon Cooper.
On Saturday, for the first time this regular season, here they go again. And for his part, Ekblad offered nothing Friday to fuel the rivalry.
“Division game, a lot of pace, physicality, all the things you’d expect from a divisional game," Ekblad said. "So, we’re excited to play.”
It just so happens that Sabourin was called up by the Lightning this week. He's expected back in Sunrise on Saturday. Maybe it's just a schedule coincidence. Maybe it's not.
“I show up every night ready to compete, and I might have gotten a little ahead of myself that time,” Sabourin told the Tampa Bay Times for a story this week. “I might have kind of overshot the runway.
“I just wanted to get in hard on the forecheck, to be honest,” Sabourin added, explaining his version of what happened on the play with Ekblad. “And then, you know, one thing led to another. But day in and day out, you know, I want to compete. I want to be hard to play against, and I want other teams to know that I’m on the ice, right? So, again, that might not have been the best way to go about it, but at the end of the day, the other team will know I’m out there.”
Cooper said this week that Sabourin — who scored a goal, his first at the NHL level in nearly six years, in Tampa Bay's 7-3 loss to the New York Rangers on Wednesday in his official debut with the team (preseason games don't actually count) — left an impression in training camp. He didn't say if Oct. 4 was part of that impression, but the Lightning are dealing with injuries and needed forwards so the move isn't totally surprising.
“You come into camp, you work hard, you don’t make the team, but you make an impact with the coaching staff and the organization, the players," Cooper said. "You go back and look at the guys that gave you everything in camp.”
It is a rivalry, for obvious reasons. The Lightning went to the Stanley Cup Final in 2020, 2021 and 2022, winning two titles in that span. The Panthers went to the Stanley Cup Final in 2023, 2024 and 2025, winning two titles in that span. The road to the title, in the Eastern Conference, now goes through Florida. The Lightning, for years, had absolute bragging rights when it came to Sunshine State hockey. That is no longer the case.
The Lightning beat the Panthers in the playoffs in 2021 and 2022. The Panthers ousted the Lightning in each of the last two years. The bad blood has probably never been this bad. And while past games — the ones that have counted — have been physical, no Panthers-Lightning game has ever come close to the 300-penalty-minute fightfest that the preseason saw last month.
“If you get into playoffs with a team and if you do it in two consecutive years, that third year, there’s a lot that they don’t forget, neither team forgets," Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. "So, that energy comes to the rink, and you know what could happen, and then they drop the puck and it’s usually something completely different. But it’ll be good. It’ll be fun.”
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