Animals

I tried not to write this post exactly like this. I waited, and tried not to go completely nuclear.

I sit four rows behind Steven Kampfer's parents. I know this because last night, when Steve Kampfer laid on the ice after being assaulted from behind by Andrew Conboy and then slashed in the head by Corey Tropp, one group of enraged Michigan fans was even more shocked than the rest of the crowd. Kampfer's mother went down to the State bench and started screaming. An usher came up to restrain her, and she cried out "that's my son." Another relative was looking around incredulously, crying, panicking, her hands waving in the air pointlessly. It's the kind of random motion you make when something has to be done and you're totally helpless. Kampfer's dad left, and I thought about following him.

Later Comley would relate that a Michigan fan broke into the locker room and tried to fight Tropp; multiple reports say it was him. I wish I, and about 200 students, had been there, too. But that's the difference between men and pigs like Conboy and Tropp: we weren't.

I thought maybe I'd be less livid after sleeping on it. I'm not. What happened last night was the most disgraceful thing I've ever seen at a sporting event, and if either of those two animals ever plays against Michigan again I'll be hoping they break their necks. That is not a kind or noble or understanding thing to say, but it's true. That was disgusting. Both should be kicked out of the CCHA, period.

Someone who should also be gone: Kevin Hall. Hall watched Conboy pull all sorts of crap, including punching Tristin Llewellyn in the face as he looked at it directly, and didn't put a stop to it. Given the opportunity to boot him off the ice with a ten minute misconduct for unsportsmanlike, he instead turned it into a minor and let Conboy loose with under a minute left. He lost control of the game. He's an idiot. He should be fired.

And let's not exonerate Comley here. He recruited Conboy and knew exactly what he was getting. Conboy's older brother was booted out of SCSU for anger management issues (side note: how big of a prick must their father be? I can only imagine) and he racked up huge penalty totals across three years of juniors. He's their leading PIM guy this year, and the announcers in the above clip euphemistically call him State's "police/enforcer," by which they mean talentless thug. During the game it became clearer and clearer that Conboy was just looking for heads to add to the wall, but Comley kept throwing him out there. Down two goals with under ten minutes on the clock, Comley went to a guy with five points on the season.

Then Comley managed to impugn a couple of Michigan players' class for talking crap to him after all this in the postgame presser. You can say whatever you want about how nice a guy he is and what an ambassador for the game he is, but that's pathetic. That's someone in denial about what happened and his role in it.

As for Tropp: a two-handed slash to the head of a prone, motionless player should be cause for ejection from the team, expulsion from school, and criminal charges. I hope the Kampfer family presses charges, and I look forward to seeing Tropp's arrest for meth addiction in my local electronic newspaper in 15 years.

Update: MVictors has frame-by-frame stuff on the incident; Yost Built also has a right-on take. On review, the Tropp thing is even more unbelievable: you can watch him cock his stick, see Kampfer is prone on the ground, and then wait for a better shot.

Update II: Impartial Wisconsin fan and former UMD announcer Bruce Ciskie at Fanhouse:

Oh, and [Tropp] slashed a player who was probably unconscious at the time. There's a special place in hockey hell for people like that.

(HT: Ace of Sports.)