Lightning Activate, Reassign Scott Sabourin

The Lightning announced Friday that they activated winger Scott Sabourin from injured reserve and subsequently assigned him to AHL Syracuse.

Sabourin, 33, has been more of a factor for Tampa Bay this season than anyone anticipated. The enforcer was assessed a preseason suspension and was brought up multiple times from Syracuse after the campaign started to finish serving it, making him eligible to suit up for the Bolts rather early in the schedule.

He was called into action more consistently in November and December, marking his first big league action since last January. All told, he played nine games before sustaining an undisclosed injury against the Canadiens on Dec. 28 that’s kept him out for nearly a month. That’s the second-most NHL action he’s ever seen in a single season, trailing only the 35 appearances he made as a 27-year-old rookie for the Senators in 2019-20.

Sabourin scored a goal and two assists – his first tally since that rookie year – and averaged 8:12 of ice time per game with a whopping 63 penalty minutes. No one even comes close to Sabourin’s 12.19 penalties taken per 60 minutes this season. Ottawa’s Kurtis MacDermid is a distant second at 8.40.

The 6’4″, 207-lb winger has always displayed enough of a scoring touch to challenge for top-nine deployment in the minors and is thus a fine enough fourth-line spark plug at the NHL level in short-term regular-season deployment. We likely haven’t seen the last of him in Tampa this season as a result. For now, though, he returns to Syracuse, where he’s notched six goals and two assists in 20 games this year.