A Blue Jackets-focused account just billed tonight's Lightning game as a fight night, with Ryan Lomberg and Jeffrey Viel as the headliners.
The teams are at intermission after the first period in Columbus, and the Blue Jackets are trying to stop a two-game skid against a Tampa Bay team that won 8-3 at Buffalo on Wednesday.
The post gave the matchup the sequel treatment:
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"Fight night two" is a fitting label for Viel, who also traded punches with Dillon Boucher when Jeffrey Viel's fight with Dillon Boucher made headlines on November 5.
Lomberg is a different story. The Blue Jackets winger has two penalty minutes through 15 games this season, so a fight is not part of his nightly routine right now.
He also hasn't scored. Lomberg has 0 goals and 0 assists in those 15 games and sits at -2, which makes any physical moment one of the few ways he shows up on the sheet.
Why Viel's role keeps putting him in these fights
Viel has 25 penalty minutes in 15 games and just 2 points. That is the profile of a player whose job is to change the temperature of a game, and his career line backs it up: 257 penalty minutes in 114 NHL games.
Lomberg has 477 penalty minutes in 409 career games, so he has been on the other side of this kind of night before. Neither player is being asked to drive offense.
For Columbus, a fight is a nice jolt, but it doesn't fix a team that is 7-9-0 and 1-5-0 on the road. The Blue Jackets lost 4-1 to Florida on Tuesday, and they need goals more than they need momentum from the bench.
What the fight did to the game is something to watch when play resumes. Columbus hosts Philadelphia on Saturday, and we will see whether the tone from tonight carries over.
This article was written with the help of artificial intelligence, based on public reports and official sources.
Who won the Lomberg and Viel fight?
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