BOSTON (CBS) – A Celtics fan is nursing a painful wound after a violent attack outside the Garden Thursday night.

A 22-year-old was stabbed in the thigh by a Heat fan.

The local college student, who doesn’t want to be identified, says he was walking out of the game after the Miami Heat beat the Boston Celtics in Game 6. That’s when a group of men in Heat T-shirts started yelling at him. “They were saying, ‘Go Heat, blank the Celtics.’”

When the Celts fan yelled back, he says one of the Heat fans charged him and then stabbed him in the back of his leg. “That’s just the worst kind of passion I’ve ever seen, and to be carrying a kitchen knife with you. You’re clearly looking to maim, possibly kill somebody,” he says.

He went to two hospitals and got ten stitches, but he’s counting his blessings. “I’m so lucky…It’s a lesson learned. I’ll think a lot, got to turn the shoulder, kind of tune it out. I think that’s the lesson to take away.”

He says the man with the knife was short, Hispanic, wearing a Heat jersey, and was walking from the direction of Charlestown toward the North End. Police are asking for the public’s help with information.