“You can’t put it into words”, Scott said. You bet it was.
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John Scott, who had played for a number of teams in the league for the past six years, was the victor of the NHL All Star Game fan vote earlier this month. The crowd booed and Twitter revolted, only tweeting #VoteMVPScott for the vote (even team NHL Twitter accounts were showing their support).
Atlantic Division goalie Roberto Luongo (1), of the Florida Panthers, stops a shot by Pacific Division forward Daniel Sedin (22), of the Vancouver Canucks, from crossing the goal line with his legs during the NHL hockey All-Star championship game, Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn. You can’t write this stuff.
Actually, Hollywood does write this sort of stuff all the time.
The players seem to have fun every all-star game, but this year was different.
Claude Julien had some high praise for a player that he described as essentially one-dimensional just three seasons ago after the Loui Eriksson situation.
Those chants rang loud as Pacific Captain John Scott led his team onto the ice after the final buzzer. His second goal was pretty, finding the top corner from a tough angle. And in hockey, the term for enforcer is goon. “You guys have blown me away”, Scott said to the fans. But he said he was unable to do a full Tiger Williams-style stick-ride because Brent Burns got in his way. “He’s a amusing guy, an intellectual guy”.
Patrice Bergeron scored twice, and Nicklas Backstrom, Steven Stamkos, Ryan McDonagh and Justin Faulk all earned at least one goal. “That was an unbelievable goal”. In an article penned for the Players’ Tribune website, Scott said the league asked him to withdraw. But he quickly found out he was one of the boys. “I clapped for him at the end”. In it, Scott explained how he used hockey to help him get a degree in engineering at Michigan Tech, on the assumption that he had no future in the sport. He was reassigned there by the Montreal Canadiens after they acquired him from the Arizona Coyotes on January 15.
On Sunday night at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, Scott made the most of his chance and made sure all of his haters regret it.
“I was going to be in the background and just enjoy it from behind the scenes, but it definitely didn’t turn out that way”, Scott said. “Burnsie (Burns) is such a spaz”. At 6 feet 8 inches tall and not far off 300 pounds, he doesn’t fit the NHL’s ideal vision of what an All-Star should be, but the enforcer’s presence at the event lit up the whole weekend. St. Louis Blues only sent one player to the All Star game and even then he saw very little action in the skills competition and was overshadowed during the three on three games.
Well, not a real fight anyway. His wife even said, she was anxious if she cheered too much she would go into labour. “I didn’t mean to hit him with that check but he was coming at me from an angle I couldn’t avoid so I went through with it”. One of the game’s most heartwarming moments came when Pacific coach Darryl Sutter’s son, Christopher, who has Down Syndrome, was one of the first to celebrate with the MVP.
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He hoped his unlikely all-star experience might open a few doors, and it appears it has.
