Today is the 19th Anniversary of the Classic Santa Brawl
On December 23, 2003, there was an event full of Santas at the historic Nassau Coliseum.
With the Islanders struggling to get fans to the games, they had a promotion in which every fan who dressed up as Santa was able to get into the game for free.
This worked out quite well as there was a solid turnout of Santas at the game. Things started to get interesting when all of the Santas took to the ice during an intermission.
Some Rangers fans where ballsy enough to show off their Rangers gear on the ice, and the other Santas were not happy with that.
As you could expect when Islanders and Rangers fans interact with each other, there were some shenanigans that occurred.
Check out what New York Times had to say about the event when originally covering it back in 2003:
"Soon, however, there was trouble. A few Santas ripped off their red jackets to reveal Rangers jerseys underneath. That was too much for the many Santas who were Islanders fans. It was as if the clock had turned back two years, and Theo Fleury, then a Ranger, was back on the Coliseum ice doing the chicken dance to mock the Islanders. Some of the Islanders Santas swarmed the Ranger Santas. A youngster in a Santa suit was seen pulling a Pavel Bure Rangers sweater off one subversive Santa."
This was more of just fun and games as the Islanders fans just wanted to take the Rangers jerseys off of their rightful owners, which makes sense.
Credit to Blades of Steel for the original content of the story.
| POLL | ||
Should more teams do promotions like this? | ||
| Yes | 16 | 57.1 % |
| No | 12 | 42.9 % |
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