Michigan vs. Michigan State This Weekend

Michigan and Michigan State will meet up this weekend in a home and home series. This is a big series that was made a little more interesting because it turns out that Michigan State is pretty good this year. Although a little less interesting because Michigan kind of sucks so far. Oh yeah, but way more interesting because the last time these two teams met, this happened.

Here's a YouTube video of the incident:

As a reminder, Tropp's suspension for the incident was to miss a pair of USHL games. It could be a smart move by the NHL to adopt this policy. Instead of suspending players, they should just force them to play in the AHL for a little bit.  I'll leave it to wiser minds than mine to explain why the punishment for signing a player agreement with a CHL team at age 15 must be served while enrolled at the school and on the team you want to play for, but the punishment for a two-handed slash to the head doesn't.(EDIT: Just to clarify, As was pointed out in the comments, Tropp never actually played in the USHL last year. He was added to Sioux Falls roster and suspended for two games, but chose not to play for them because it would have affected his academic standing. The only thing that stopped him from doing that was timing.)

It should be interesting to see how Michgan responds. I wouldn't expect much since they're probably getting a hard lesson about discipline and composure beaten into them this week in practice after their debacle against Miami last weekend, and getting a win is much more important right now than getting vengeance. But, it might not be a bad idea to have someone drop the gloves with Tropp right away to get that out of the way and move on. One person who certainly won't be starting any trouble is Steve Kampfer's dad, who won't be allowed at the game. I guess he wasn't able work off his punishment by sitting through a bunch of meaningless peewee games.

But regardless of whether or not someone gets knocked unconscious with a cheapshot again, I just hope, for Rick Comley's sake, that nobody swears at him like they did last year, because he is 900 years old and they didn't feel the need to express themselves like that back in the Cenozoic Era, and because nobody likes to be reminded of what a huge asshole he is.

The atmosphere for these games should be pretty tense, and it should end up being two great games of hockey to watch. Michigan fans may have delighted in MSU's struggles last season, but it should be fun bringing the intensity back to that rivalry.