This is not a good look for the NHL.
After fans voted enforcer John Scott into the All-Star Game as a gag, the league asked him to bail on the exhibition.
Scott, who was traded from Phoenix to Montreal and then sent down to the AHL, which made him ineligible for the game, became a folk hero among fans (and non-NHL fans). The backlash to Scott being ineligible generated many conspiracy theories about the deal between the Coyotes and Canadians and forced the league to later announce that Scott could play in the game (which, mind you, will be coached by country music stars) despite not being on an NHL roster at the moment.
However, the ordeal still does not sit well with Scott, who exposed the league’s tactics in a new must-read column for The Players’ Tribune.
According to Scott, the NHL tried to use his own kids against him and asked him if his children would be proud of him for playing in the game.
Scott also made his case that he deserves to be in the game despite what anyone thinks of his talent level.
From The Players’ Tribune:
But at the same time: 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.
If the league thought this was an embarrassment, pretty much all of the players I’ve encountered have thought otherwise. I’ve gotten texts from so many guys saying the same thing: “You should go.”
And that didn’t happen because of the internet. I busted my ass to be one of them. I’ve skated every day since I was three years old to be one of them. I’ve persevered through Juniors roster cuts, Alaskan bus rides, Advanced Dynamics exams, and — yes — fights, to be one of them.
But I’m one of them. And that means a lot to me.
It means a lot to my family.
So when someone from the NHL calls me and says, “Do you think this is something your kids would be proud of?”
… That’s when they lost me.
Lose him they did.
Scott added, “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.”