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Blake Nissen | FILE
Tom Pokorney and University of Pittsburgh's Brooks Antil during their game.
01.19.18
The chaos started after Bryan Lubin harmlessly shot the puck into the net to give Ohio a 5-2 lead over Pitt on Feb. 4 at Bird Arena.
The goal was normal. Everything else after it was not.
Ben Cirba, the Panthers’ goalie, was perhaps a little steamed about his team falling behind for the second consecutive game — the Bobcats won 9-0 the night before. After Lubin’s goal, Cirba landed a punch with his blocker to Lubin’s head, Lubin said.
The punch triggered the frenzy that followed.
Lubin pulled off Cirba’s facemask in retaliation but couldn’t do much else to the goalie after being swarmed by Pitt players, who were then met by another swarm of Ohio players. Each respective player linked up with one from the other side and got to know each other a bit better.
Each Ohio player went one-on-one with a Pitt player, except for defenseman Reilly Moore, the odd man out tasked with defending himself from both a Pitt player and Cirba.
Ohio goalie Ryan Heltion watched from the opposite end of the ice, but, when he saw Cirba taking advantage of Moore being held by the Pitt player, he needed to step in.
Heltion, a senior at the time, skated across center ice — which warrants an automatic suspension for a goalie — and pulled Cirba away from Moore. Heltion asked Cirba if he wanted to fight, which he felt was more appropriate considering that the two would be on their own and in their bulky goalie equipment.
Cirba denied the offer, Heltion said, but changed his mind moments after and landed another punch with the blocker to the unsuspecting Heltion, who fell to the ice.
"Once I got up, I wanted to square up with him because, if he's going to do that, might as well make it a fair one,” Heltion said.
Now Heltion was ready to fight. This time, he wasn’t going to ask Cirba.
But the second opportunity never came.
“He was actually on his way skating to the bench because he was proud that he knocked me over or something like that,” Heltion said.
Gabe Lampron had different results from his goalie. The forward jumped into the action after he saw a pair of Pitt players ambush forward Tyler Harkins, who skated in to defend Lubin.
Lampron didn’t hesitate to escalate the situation.
“Harkins goes in and pushes that guy, and then two guys go after Harkins, and Harkins is my boy,” Lampron said, “So I go after the one guy, toss him, and there's one guy who's just, no one's after (him). So I'm like, 'We're winning by five, I don't care.’ So I just go after him, and I'm trying to rip his helmet off, just jam his head into the ice.”
Lampron doesn’t believe what he did was the dirtiest part of the scrum, though. In his opinion, that goes to defenseman Tom Pokorney, who wrestled with the first Pitt player to reach Lubin.
“He wrapped a guy,” Lampron said. “If you see it on the video, he comes in from the blue line, full sprint, kills a guy.”
The American Collegiate Hockey Association officials who handed out suspensions after the game likely would have disagreed with Lampron’s recollections on who acted the dirtiest in the fight. All six Ohio players on the ice originally received one-game suspensions, and all but one were rescinded upon appeal from the team.
Lampron’s appeal was the only one that was denied.
Pitt will return to Athens this weekend, but Ohio, which has played with a small and injury-riddled roster all season, would be wise to avoid replicating a similar situation.
Instead, the Bobcats will focus on grabbing two much-needed wins before finishing out a Central States Collegiate Hockey League-heavy schedule to end the season. Ohio plans to leave Pitt on its own in any reservations for a fighting rematch.
That doesn’t mean that the memories of the last bout have faded, though.
“For me personally, I couldn't even tell you what kid I was going against,” Lampron said. “Them? It may be a different story. They might remember us and everything, but, honestly, I don't know. It was definitely a good time.”
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