John Scott will be a team captain at Sunday's NHL All-Star Game -- elected by a fans in a bit of a lark -- which doesn't seem to be all that zany considering the caliber of professional sports' all-star games in general.
But Scott, a 6-foot-8 enforcer who made his NHL debut with the Wild, might not play in the NHL again. Phoenix traded him to Montreal two weeks ago, and the Canadiens sent him to the minor leagues. Scott thinks, and perhaps he's correct, that it all had to do with the league not wanting him to play in the All-Star Game.
He says it best in his own words, on the Players' Tribune website.
Writes Scott:
This isn't Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I'm not some random person off the street, and I didn't win a golden ticket to "play hockey with the stars." I won an internet fan vote, sure. And at some point, without question, it was a joke. It might even finish as a joke. But it didn't start as one. It started with a very small pool, out of a very small pool, out of the very, very smallest pool of hockey players in the world: NHLers. That was the vote. A fan vote, an internet vote — but a vote from among the 700 or so best hockey players in North American professional sports. And I'm one of them.
Scott's a pretty bright guy (Michigan Tech engineering degree) and a family man and, based on his heartfelt words, an All-Star in some quarters. The story (with some colorful language) is worth a read.
