Thirty-Year Anniversary of Mike Milbury's Shoe Incident at Madison Square Garden

Thirty-Year Anniversary of Mike Milbury’s Shoe Incident at Madison Square Garden

by NESN Staff on Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 4:16PM

Dec. 23, 1979 was a famous day for footwear — sort of.

On this date, members of the Boston Bruins went into the stands at Madison Square Garden during a donnybrook with the New York Rangers. What happened after that will go down as one of the strangest moments in Boston sports history.

As the story goes, a fight unfolded when Boston’s Al Secord offered the Rangers’ Ulf Nilsson a little payback from a previous altercation with a sucker punch after the buzzer had sounded.

While the two parties exchanged shoves and unkind words by the glass, Rangers fan John Kaptain reached over glass, smacked the B’s Stan Jonathan with a rolled-up program and took off with his stick. After Terry O’Reilly led the B’s into the stands, Kaptain shortly found himself on the receiving end of his own shoe thanks to Mike Milbury, who was then a five-year veteran defenseman out of nearby Brighton, Mass.