Over the course of three days, starting with a simple article published on January 28th and ending with the unimaginable on January 31st, one professional hockey player went from being a league nobody to the most talked about player of the season.
That player is John Scott. To be frank, he may be as ordinary as his name. He’s a 33-year-old enforcer, better known for fighting and hitting than his playing skills. He played in the league for eight years and amassed only eleven points. He had limited ice time in only eleven of forty-nine games this season.
So when news came out that John Scott probably wouldn’t actually be sent to the 2016 NHL All-Star Game, it wasn’t a big deal, at first. But, let’s start from the beginning.
To create hype and interest before the All-Star Game, the league decided to open up fan voting, where fans could vote for any professional player in the NHL. Things spiraled out of the league’s control--as things on the Internet usually do--and everyone started to vote for John Scott. Unfortunately for Scott, it wasn’t because of his impeccable playing and efficient goal scoring; he had become the punchline of a very cruel joke.
The league didn’t try to hide their anger with the situation. Deputy commissioner Bill Daly voiced his displeasure in a statement, saying “as long as voting is legitimate, we will honor the results.”
Scott himself even made a statement on behalf of the league officials, who asked him to nudge the fan voting in any other direction that the “John Scott movement.” He did it without hesitation, saying that he didn’t deserve it, something he had come to believe.
But, even after denouncing himself as an option for voting and urging people to choose his teammates instead, John Scott still won the fan vote, earning him not only a spot in the NHL All-Star Game but also making him captain of the Pacific Division team. The league wasn’t happy. So, they had him sent down to the AHL, one of the minor league affiliates for the NHL, in an effort to keep him out of the game.
Scott was traded to the Montreal Canadiens mid-season, which doesn’t make sense when the team he was playing for was doing relatively well--better than expected, in fact. The Canadiens organization immediately pushed him into their minor league affiliate, which automatically made him ineligible to participate in the All-Star game. The league wanted Scott as far away from the game as possible and they fulfilled their wish in such a disgusting, transparent fashion.
News got out about how the league was handling the situation, and the tides began to turn. The same people who had voted for John Scott now had a fond appreciation for him. People started to see him as a person--with feelings, with a career on the line, with two daughters and a wife nine months pregnant with twins. In the wake of all the drama, supporters and teammates of Scott described his likability, his loyalty, and his regular-guy relatability; the man has an engineering degree, for goodness sake.
Scott handled the situation well, writing in one article that “while I don’t deserve to be an All-Star, I also don’t think I deserve to be treated like I’ve been by the league throughout this saga...that I’m an NHL player is no accident. I genuinely believe that when I’m on the ice, or even on the bench, I make my teammates feel safe to do what they do best.” In his true humble fashion, he even admitted he’ll probably be the worst skater in the game.
But the final straw, for both the fans and for Scott, was when the league brought up his children. “Do you think this is something your kids would be proud of,” is what they asked Scott about his decision to not give up his spot in the All-Star game. Scott phrased his answer beautifully in his article saying, “because, while I may not deserve to be an NHL All-Star, I know I deserve to be the judge of what my kids will--and won’t--be proud of me for.”
The National Hockey League had failed one of its own, taking a heartwarming story of an unknown player getting recognized by fans to play with some of the best, and twisting it out of pettiness and attempting to save the reputation of a fake hockey game. They failed to consider the actual consequences of stripping the already low-paid Scott and his family of contractual benefits days before his wife was due to give birth. The fans surely had a hand in starting it, but the NHL was too concerned with money and reputation to actually look at the whole picture.
After an excessive amount of pressure from fans, the league decided to let Scott play. Gary Bettman, league commissioner, even stated that he was welcome to play the whole time.
On Saturday, during the weekend’s skills competition--one of the more fun nights, full of jokes and focused on entertaining fans--Scott laced up his skates and took to the ice alongside NHL stars Jaromir Jagr, Claude Giroux, Vladimir Tarasenko, and Patrick Kane, some of the most notable names in the league.
But, once again, the league made him the outcast. While all the other players wore their home team’s jerseys, Scott wanted to wear the jersey of his current team, the AHL’s Saint John’s IceCaps. The NHL reportedly vetoed this plan and instead had him wear the black All-Star Jersey. Scott was made teamless.
Despite having no team and the league analyzing his every move under a microscope, Scott seemed to have the time of his life. He joked around in the Breakaway Challenge, engaged in a mock brawl and was seen playing with some of the other players’ children who were on the ice. He made the most out of the hand he was dealt. And that wasn’t even the end of the weekend.
Sunday was game day, and Scott had some of the best ice time of his life. Throughout the course of the day, Scott scored two goals--half as many as his eight-year-career total. His first goal set off a standing ovation from the fans who had been rooting for him all weekend. He scored a beauty of a goal on a breakaway, something that can be a challenge for even the best players.
Not only that, but Scott captained the Pacific Division team to an All-Star victory and the one million dollar prize that came along with it. Treated like the “hero” everyone said he was, he was hoisted onto his teammates shoulders in celebration, not an easy task with Scott standing at 6-feet-8-inches and 275 pounds. Once worried that his All-Star teammates wouldn’t accept him as deserving to be there, they literally held him above the NHL’s elite.
When it came time to announce the Most Valuable Player finalists of the All-Star game, fans once again had to voice their displeasure. Taylor Hall, Robert Luongo, and Johnny Gaudreau were named as the finalists. Fans at the game responded with thundering boos. They then did what they did best, took to the Internet to get Scott the recognition he rightfully deserved. The hashtag ‘VoteMVPScott’ spread across the hockey Twitter world like wildfire. The Twitter accounts of NHL teams and professional players league wide-voiced their support for Scott. One man inspired an entire fan base.
When they announced that John Scott, the man who two days ago was purposely sent to the minor leagues so he couldn’t play in the All-Star game, had won the MVP award, no one was more shocked than Scott himself. He was already applauding the winner before it was announced. When it was announced, a teammate tapped on his shoulder and alerted him, and he pointed at himself with a gloved hand, face frozen in utter disbelief.
The fairy tale doesn’t end there for John Scott. Scott, in a statement to Yahoo! Sports said his journey from unlikely fan vote winner to All-Star MVP couldn’t have been scripted better. Some filmmakers may be willing to try, however. According to TSN’s Frank Seravalli, Scott and his agent have both already been approached about turning this almost unbelievable story into a movie.
John Scott deserves all the attention he’s gotten and is getting because he went up against one of the biggest professional sports leagues in the world and came out better than before. He handled his situation with the utmost respect for his teammates and employers. John Scott was a class act. The NHL, the league he played for and devoted a good portion of his life to, is not.
And this is where my personal rant begins.
I have been a hockey fan, devoted to the Philadelphia Flyers and the National Hockey League, ever since I can remember. I grew up loving the sport, loving the players, loving the league. I’ve watched the league mess up a few times. But then again, what professional sports organization is completely without flaws? I’ve forgotten about the 2012-2013 lockout, where fans and players lost half a season because owners were too focused on money. I even tried to put my feelings aside when the league brushed the accusations of rape against Patrick Kane under the rug.
But enough is enough.
Never should money and reputation come before what is best for a person and their family, no matter how unimportant your organization thinks he is. I’m already in love with a sport that I’m proud to be a fan of, a sport that’s truly fun to root for. I’m not proud of the league that controls that sport and, if things don’t change, I never will be.
I, like many other fans, won’t tolerate a league that employs people like Mike Milbury. A former player, coach, general manager and now NBC Sports Network desk analyst, he has proven that he is unfit to do his job as an objective reporter. His overbearingly rude, demeaning personality makes watching intermission unenjoyable. He proved this once again during the NHL All-Star Game. In a spineless and underhanded comment, Milbury said, “this next line is the donut line, the hole in the middle...we got Perry who can score and Sedin who can score and Scott will take short shifts.” The “hole in the middle” refers to a picture of John Scott in the middle of the screen. A comment like that, about a guy who has taken every obstacle the league threw at him in stride, was not only unnecessary but disgusting and unprofessional.
Popular NHL defenseman P.K. Subban had one of the greatest points of this weekend. He believes the league needs to embrace the fun side of players more, stating, “There is a culture of the sport that I want to see respected and I don’t want to see change. You want to respect the jersey, you want to respect the logo, you want to respect your players but be yourself, have fun. The perception is that in order to be a good team player, you need to be like everybody else. And I don’t understand that.” John Scott broke the mold of the typical NHL All-Star, and he was met with tremendous backlash.
Finally, I can’t respect a leader who constantly talks down to fans, insults their intelligence and lies about the league’s actions. I’ve never liked Gary Bettman, but I’ve always tried to see from his perspective--that he’s just doing his job, that he has to be the public face for the league, that he has to make decisions that he thinks are best for everyone. But, when is he going to realize that time and time again he’s angering fans and, at times, ruining the sport? That arguing over money with the very players that attract the fans that ultimately pay his bills isn’t in anyone’s best interest. Love of the sport trumps a lot of things, and Bettman could learn something about that.
For professional hockey to be more than it already is, for it to grow in popularity, all sides of the organization have to work together. That’s not happening right now. It hasn’t for quite some time, and probably won’t if changes aren’t made soon.
As for the All-Star Game, fans are hoping that the players and the league embrace what happened this year and learn from it. Fans want it returned to what it once was. Travis Hughes of SB Nation said it best, “Turn All-Star Weekend not into a showcase of the league’s top on-ice talent, but into the league’s personalities. Stop worrying about whether the hockey will be good, or if the players ‘deserve’ to be there. Focus more on whether or not it’ll make people smile.”
