Thug-gate Linkorama

The Ann Arbor News spoke with the CCHA today, and the league said they are reviewing the incident and will make a decision before the end of the week. Tropp is out the next three games anyway thanks to the penalties levied on him during the game.

Score one for crazy internet rumors.Saturday night, there was mention of an incident with a Michigan fan going to the MSU lockerroom to start a fight. There were several variations and combinations of people involved, but most seemed to involve Steve Kampfer's father. The Michigan Daily pretty much confirms that it was him, and he went after Corey Tropp. Honestly, given the situation, can you blame him? Security at Yost could have been a little better though.

How do you defend the indefensible? For Michigan State, it's mostly been, "Hey, words can hurt too!" Take for example this article in the State News:

I understand the Michigan vs. MSU rivalry is one of the most heated rivalries in all of sports.

But what happened on Saturday night both on and off the ice leaves reason for die-hard fans of both schools to hang their heads.

The rivalry and school pride runs so deep in many people that they lose their heads. That’s when bad things happen.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess the barrage of F bombs hurled at State had less to do with rivalry and school pride and more to do with the whole watching two guys try to seriously maim a Michigan player thing. That's just me though.

The incident was ugly enough to make sports gossip site Deadspin which means it's probably going to hit mainstream national media in a day or two. It's very poor publicity for college hockey, especially in a week where the WHL had their own embarrassing incident
.(Side note: How did color guy Dick Gibson get canned for that? It looked to me like there was plenty of garbage out on the ice. He's just doing his job reporting what he saw.)

MGoBlog obviously wasn't happy with what happened, and had an interesting perspective, sitting behind Kampfer's family during the game. I also completely agree that Comley was responsbile for bringing Conboy into the MSU, and of all the adjectives you can use to describe what he did--dirty, gutless, horrifying--surprising isn't one of them. MGoBlog also calls for both players to be kicked off the team. If I were in MSU's position, I'd sit both for the rest of the season, and let a new coach next year make a decision on whether or not they belong on the team.

We'll try putting this to a vote with a poll to see what the hockey public thinks.