Today marks the 30th anniversary of Boston Bruins players climbing the glass at MSG to do battle with Rangers fans, an occasion marked duly by the New York Times’ Dave Seminara‘s humorous description….and a reminder Peter McNabb was usually “the guy who™d pick up our gloves for us after a fight.”
“I grabbed his shoe, took a little tug on it, and then sort of double pumped, Milbury said. œI don™t know if I hesitated for a minute because I thought I™d be vilified for the next 30 years, but I gave him a cuff across the leg, and then I did what I thought was probably the most egregious thing of all: I threw his shoe on the ice.
Eighteen Bruins went into the stands. Milbury said, œIf you watch the tape ” and I can freely throw my teammates under the bus now after 30 years ” people were throwing some serious shots down below us that were obscured by the fact that everybody was focusing on the idiot highest up in the stands hitting somebody with a shoe.
Bruins fans, in particular, still relish the incident. E. M. Swift, who covered hockey for Sports Illustrated, played in a college game in 1972 when one of his Princeton teammates was beaten with a œstale Italian sub by the Colgate athletic director while he grappled with Milbury. œWe hate everything New York here in Boston, he said, œso the fact that it was the Rangers and New Yorkers getting beaten with a shoe, those guys are folk heroes up here.
œUnder the same circumstances, I don™t think I™d go through a process of sorting through the rules and regulations and legal consequences, Terry O™Reilly said. œI think I™d jump over the glass and grab the guy again.