Forgive me for straying from the Toledo Walleye’s family-friendly company line, but this must be said first: the goalie fight in Saturday night’s brawlarama was awesome.

Is there a sports unicorn more spectacularly absurd than two dudes wearing 25 pounds of unwieldy equipment going all meet-me-outside on each other?

No, there is not.

So go ahead, lap it up.

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A night after the Walleye held 1980s night at the Huntington Center, Matej Machovsky (Toledo) v. Mason McDonald (Kansas City) — the grand finale of a slugfest that made SportsCenter and went more viral than a cold in a first-grade class — gave us the real thing. You could almost feel the smoke in your lungs, so much did the rollicking scene remind me of Murder, Inc., and the old Sports Arena.

It was irresistible theater. Shoot us.

But because we must occasionally put on our grown-up hat, let us remind this hockey treasure was the result of complete trash.

A day later, the Walleye organization remained at a loss over what defenseman Kevin Tansey labeled a “dirty, planned assault,” calling for the ECHL to drop the anvil on the Kansas City goon who started the melee of the season.

If nobody said so explicitly, bottom line is the coward should be kicked out of the ECHL for life.

Yes, for life.

VIDEO: Brawl during Saturday’s game between the Toledo Walleye and Kansas City Mavericks

Sorry, times have changed. There is fighting (fine), cheap shots (not fine), then there is the kind of thuggish assault with a weapon that would have no place in a prison fight, let alone a modern pro hockey game.

We saw it with Kalamazoo captain Ben Wilson’s savage playoff attack of Simon Denis in the Kelly Cup playoff this past spring, and we witnessed it again with Kansas City forward Garrett Klotz’s ambush of A.J. Jenks.

On alleged orders from the Mavericks coaching staff, the 6-foot-5, 235-pound Klotz — a one-trick dinosaur who has two points and 97 penalty minutes in 29 games for three teams this season — and his teammates came on to the ice midway through the third period looking for a fight. Klotz sucker-punched Jenks, then cross-checked his collapsed and defenseless body three times.

It was disgraceful, and if the ECHL is serious about player safety and moving beyond its ruffian past, the league should tell Klotz he can take his game — and I use that term loosely — elsewhere.

I hear you, Wilson only received a 20-game suspension. But he was and is a team captain, and a different situation. This is the chance to show faux tough guys everywhere there is no tolerance for calculated violence against defenseless players.

“This is an opportunity for the ECHL to send a message to the rest of the league,” said Walleye coach Dan Watson, who called for Klotz to be suspended at least the last 22 games of the season. “It’s a perfect opportunity, a perfect time to do it. This is a guy who if you look at his resume, that’s what he is brought on to do. There is a reason why Garrett Klotz can’t even stay on a team with bad records in our league. He’s in the league to do one thing and he did it wrongly [Saturday]. There should be a massive suspension.”

Watson saved fire for the Kansas City coaches, too, saying they should be suspended and fined.

This is where this gets tricky. Walleye players said their Kansas City counterparts told them late in Toledo’s 5-0 win they were under instructions to throw their fists around.

Which I suppose is OK. That certainly happened in the shot-and-a-beer old days,but in a minor league meant to develop players in an increasingly wide-open game, it is understandable the Walleye find this unseemly.

“The days of tapping three guys or two defenders and saying, ‘Hey it’s time,’ those days are gone,” Watson said. “For me, that’s unacceptable behavior by a professional coaching staff. Players understand when a momentum change is needed, when it’s time to stick up for a teammate or yourself so you’re not getting bullied.”

Tansey, who played 44 games for Kansas City last year, called Mavericks coach John-Scott Dickson “spineless.”

“The fact that we had to have police officers between dressing rooms after a game and players had warned us before face-offs guys were sent out to start stuff, it's disgusting, it’s gross,” Tansey said after the Walleye’s 1-0 win Sunday against Wichita. “It's not good for the game. It's repulsive. You try to play a game, you try to move up in this league, you try to make plays, and if you’re playing against a team like that, and you score too many goals on them, then they just say, ‘OK, we're going to hurt them.’ There's no place in the game or the world for that kind of stuff. I don't know what drives someone to sucker punch someone from behind, then cross check them violently. That's psychotic.”

We reached out to Kansas City, but a team spokesman said Dickson had no comment beyond a statement.

“‪I want to make this clear — players were not sent out to deliberately do anything in last night’s game,” Dickson said. “Things were happening on the ice. We will always play till the end. Emotions and frustration came into play and that is hockey.”

Sure, gutless hockey.

“If that happens on the street, that's assault with a weapon,” Tansey said, “and I don't think it makes a difference whether it’s on or off the ice.”

Contact David Briggs at: dbriggs@theblade.com, 419-724-6084, or on Twitter @DBriggsBlade.

First Published February 12, 2018, 2:27 a.m.