COLUMBUS, Ohio — Mathieu Olivier has been working at his craft for many years, but there was a moment last season when the 28-year-old forward’s thunderous right fist and efficient yet fearless fighting style launched him into a different stratosphere.
The Columbus Blue Jackets were hosting the New York Rangers on a sleepy Sunday in late February. Olivier, who had been in and out of the Blue Jackets’ lineup all season, accepted a fight offer only 2 minutes, 12 seconds, into the game from Rangers rookie Matt Rempe, who was becoming quite a folk hero in Manhattan and beyond.
The fight went very well for Olivier. His decisive win — four or five brick-heavy rights and an eventual takedown — exhilarated a sold-out crowd of 18,293 in Nationwide Arena. It also sent several current and former NHL players, especially fighters, scrambling for their phones.
“Oh, no doubt,” former NHL tough guy Paul Bissonnette told The Athletic. “(Rempe) was such a big story and everybody was so focused on him, and then it was like … ‘Whoa! Who’s this guy?’”
Mike Rupp, a forward who played for six NHL clubs, including the Blue Jackets and Rangers, spends considerable time in New York City as an analyst for NHL Network. He was already tuned into Olivier’s game, he said, but the Rempe fight helped spread the news.
“Rempe was that perfect storm, where he’d taken over the league,” Rupp said. “Even today, at the NHL Shop, there’s a table of Rangers sweaters, and it’s (Igor) Shesterkin, (Artemi) Panarin and Rempe. Like, really? He’s in commercials. Everybody was like, ‘He’s the guy.’
“Well, Olivier was like, ‘Hold on a sec.’ People who didn’t know who Olivier was, that was his coming-out party.”
But Olivier is so much more than any single fight. And he’s so much more than just a fighter. It’s all come together this season for Olivier in a way that, frankly, makes him a challenge to describe.
Olivier is one hell of a fighter, obviously. Most agree he’s the most feared fighter in today’s NHL, and he leads the league with 13 fighting majors.
But he’s also become, surprisingly, a secondary scorer. Olivier’s 16 goals are more than three times his previous career-high, and he ranks sixth on the Blue Jackets, who have been one of the NHL’s top offensive clubs.
Also, Olivier emerged as a leader in the Blue Jackets’ dressing room when it was desperately needed. The late summer tragedy that took the life of Johnny Gaudreau demanded that certain players step forward amid the grief, and Olivier, according to players in the room, was one of those guys.
This month, just before the NHL trade deadline, Blue Jackets GM Don Waddell signed Olivier to a six-year, $18 million contract, a show of respect for all three of those attributes. Waddell said he had inquiries from eight to 10 clubs wanting to trade for him.
The $3 million salary-cap hit was surprising to some, because many believe Olivier could have landed a bigger figure this summer in free agency. One agent told The Athletic that Olivier would have made at least $4 million per year on the open market.
The term was a surprise, too. It’s one of the longest contracts in Blue Jackets history. From Olivier’s perspective, it’s proof of how much he wants to be in Columbus. From the club’s perspective, it’s proof that they don’t think any of this has been a fluke.
Perfect scenario
Olivier believes that what we’re seeing now — the unusual mix of a fighter who is something more than a liability offensively — actually began taking shape late last season. He became a lineup regular in late February, scored four goals in March and started to believe he could be more than he’d always been.
Then came the offseason, in which he spent more time on the ice than in the gym — a new routine — and worked with several former NHL players to sharpen his offensive skills, especially puck-handling and puck-protecting.
Olivier also told the “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast that he worked with a “neuro performance doctor” at a clinic in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, to help him focus, visualize and process split-second plays more effectively.
Meanwhile, back in Columbus, the Blue Jackets were making huge decisions. Waddell was hired as GM. Dean Evason, a former NHL irritant and fighter, was hired as coach, and he brought on Scott Ford as one of his assistants.
That last decision wasn’t big news across the league, but Olivier was beyond thrilled when the news reached his offseason home in Quebec.
Olivier spent four seasons in the Nashville Predators organization beginning in 2019, mostly bouncing between the NHL and their top affiliate, the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League. Ford, a noted heavyweight throughout his minor-league career, was an assistant in Milwaukee under coach Karl Taylor.
It’s true that Olivier has met the moment this season in Columbus. But the moment met him, too.
“Fordo knows me,” Olivier said. “He knew me when I was raw, just coming into the pros and learning how to define my role (as a fighter), not just how to do it but when to do it. If you haven’t done it, you can’t really teach it, and Fordo has done it.
“He was big for me (in Milwaukee), and I was a big penalty-killer down there with him, too. He taught me how to be a pro, and he’d tell me when I was right and when I was wrong.
“So, yeah, when I saw that news … I was pretty excited. It felt like a win.”
Evason came into his first training camp in Columbus insisting that every player on the roster would begin with a clean slate. He has said many times that he didn’t watch film from recent seasons and he ordered his assistant coaches, Ford included, not to give him scouting reports on players.
Nobody was simply stuck in the roles they’d always held, which meant that Olivier was no longer marginalized as a fourth-line, part-time player.
Olivier has 16-11-27 in 70 games, making him one of only four players to dress in every game this season. With 12 games remaining, Olivier has already scored more goals this season than in his entire 168-game career before this season.
The only player in the 24-season history of the Blue Jackets to have 15 or more goals and 125 or more penalty minutes in a single season is long-ago franchise favorite Tyler Wright, who had 16-16-32 and 140 penalty minutes in the inaugural season of 2000-01.
Olivier has played almost exclusively in a third-line role this season, but there have been stretches when Evason has played him on the Blue Jackets’ second line. Outside of a preseason game, this would have been unheard of in previous seasons.
“There’s no reason this season can’t be (replicated),” Olivier said. “No reason. The way that I play is the new standard for me. Numbers are numbers, right? I might put up 10 (goals) one year, who knows? But the way I’m influencing the game night in, night out is what I’m focused on, and it’s been translating into goals and points.
“Honestly, some of my best work this year has been changing the tilt of the ice. People see the fights and the goals, but the hits and the blocks and the forechecking, I think, is where I’ve been most effective this year.”
King of the hill
The Blue Jackets traded a fourth-round draft pick to Nashville for Olivier in the summer of 2022, because they were tired of being bullied on the ice. Fighters don’t have the role they once commanded in the NHL, but ask a team that doesn’t have one just how valuable they are.
And the prevailing opinion across the NHL is that Olivier is the toughest fighter in the league. Toronto’s Ryan Reaves and New Jersey’s Kurtis MacDermid make most of the short lists, but Reaves rarely fights anymore and MacDermid plays only sparingly.
“To me, he’s the toughest guy in the league,” Rupp said. “The guys I work with, the guys who played that role in the league, whenever his name comes up, they say, ‘Oh, my God. I would pay anything to have that guy on my team.’
“He’s very technical with his grabs. He protects himself. He doesn’t play the lottery (by taking big swings). I don’t think he’s afraid to get hit, but he’s calculated in what he’s doing. He doesn’t go in there flailing. Talking to former players and current guys, I hear over and over again, ‘Holy s—, this guy is tough.’”
Jody Shelley, who does TV for the Blue Jackets and for Amazon Prime, agreed with Rupp, specifically mentioning his “grabs” of the opponent’s sweater as the fight is starting.
“When he fought Rempe, he had a plan on how to grab him so (Rempe) couldn’t string him out,” Shelley said. “(Olivier’s) a hard guy to fight because he’s a little shorter and he’s stocky. He’s got power. I don’t think you can get him off-balance.
“There are some guys, when you grab them, it’s man-strength. There’s an instant when you grab a hold and you go, ‘Oh, boy.’ Rob Ray (a longtime Buffalo Sabre) was that way. When he got ahold of you, you were in for it. It was like a bear got ahold of you. I think Matty’s the same way.”
Bissonnette is a big fan of MacDermid’s fighting style — “He’s an absolute nail gun,” he said — but he believes that Olivier has ascended to the top of the hill beginning last season and continuing into this one.
“I do think Olivier is the top dog now, and he’s getting paid accordingly, and I couldn’t he happier for the guy,” Bissonnette said. “It’s great they give him the ice time he deserves, too. He’s not a knuckle-dragger they’re just rolling out there six minutes a night. He’s been an effective player, and what a great time for him to have a career year.
“I wasn’t a natural fighter, so I had to protect myself a little bit more. Not only is he tactical, but I see times when he’s willing to open up and exchange. That’s what keeps it fun, almost like a throwback-style fighting.”
Olivier has much respect for the pugilists who came before him. He grew up admiring Chris Neil, Brandon Prust, and others, the players who were feared fighters but could also put up points and play higher than the fourth line. But he doesn’t want to hear too much praise for his own game.
“I plug my ears to it,” Olivier said. “The way I look at things, you can’t start being too confident and you have to respect everyone because it’s the best league in the world. Everybody who has been doing that role, they’re super talented and they’re tough, tough customers.
“If the narrative around that favors me, I’m not going to oppose it. But there are a lot of guys who can do it and deserve the respect.”
In a way, the league itself has informed Olivier that his reputation has elevated. How?
“I haven’t asked for many fights this year, and that means I’m doing my job better,” he said. “If I don’t have to ask, but they’re coming up to me because they have to — because I finished a hit, or whatever — that means I’m forcing their hand, which is different than it’s been in previous years.”
Here’s an example:
The Blue Jackets played in New Jersey on March 11, and Devils forward Stefan Noesen had gotten physical with Blue Jackets center Adam Fantilli and defenseman Dante Fabbro early in the game. Noesen wasn’t going to fight Olivier, so the matter had to be handled differently.
Olivier skated over toward the Devils’ bench during a stoppage and found Noesen.
“Normally I’d go after that guy,” Olivier said of Noesen. “Instead I went after (Jack) Hughes with a clean, hard check (later in the game). Nothing against the kid. He’s a tremendous player. But if people want to go after our young guys, I’ll go after yours and we’ll see where we end up.
“I didn’t ask anyone to fight. I just said, if you guys want to play that way, we’ll play that way.”
This is where Olivier’s role change has made a difference, Rupp said. In the past, he would never have been on the ice with Hughes to handle the matter in that way. Olivier has given the Blue Jackets the confidence to play him higher in the lineup, and they’ve given him a richer role to establish his ground rules.
“I know from experience that if you didn’t really want to fight a guy, you always had an out if you’re playing higher in the lineup,” Rupp said. “You could be like, ‘Dude, get out of here.’ But when it’s a guy in the top nine, that’s a different animal. You have to deal with them.
“If Mathieu Olivier wants to make noise, you almost have to answer it. There aren’t many guys like that, and that makes him scarier. If he wants to create hell out there, he can.”
The goal, Olivier said, is not to stop now. He’s now an established NHL player and a lineup regular, but there are still next levels to reach. To him, Washington’s Tom Wilson and Ottawa’s Brady Tkachuk are the epitome of players who can make an impact physically and offensively.
Wilson has set a career-high with 31 goals this season, and he has seven seasons in his career with 100-plus penalty minutes. Tkachuk is on pace to have his fourth straight season with 30-plus goals and 100-plus minutes.
“Those guys are still up there,” Olivier said. “The goal is to get to that point. But I’m not trying to be the next Tom Wilson or Brady Tkachuk. I’m trying to become the best version of me.”
(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
