I watched with pleasure the 2016 NHL All Star Game in Nashville. A great little 3 on 3 shinny tourney and great skills displayed by 1st time All Stars Dylan Larkin, Niclas Backstrom and PK Subban ( yeah whats with that) couldn't cover up the heavy handedness and moronic attitudes of the NHL (as if we needed any more proof of that).
They have set up rules for the qualification/selection and when they got a result they didn't like they have tried to discourage and alter the process they have set up, when an also ran - "goon" John Scott - by the will of the fans - got selected to take part in an All Star game. Not just to participate, he got the most votes of any All Star. His own team Phoenix then disowned him throughout this process, trading him to Montreal who demoted him to the farm rather raising above the ridiculous and embracing the situation. So TheCoyotes rather had no player at the All Star Game than A John Scott selected by their fans! shame on you Coyotes! And the League is so out of touch, and so fake - it is frightening! They started to support him only after they realised the shot them selves in the foot and that John Scott was decided to attend and to make his family and fans proud.
And so it ended with the Hockey fans who would not be denied whether the NHL liked it or not.
I must applaud all the NHL All Star players who of course knew how sensitive the issue was and supported the so Charming John Scott at every turn. Their collective middle finger to the NHL top brass was only thinly veiled. A Jagr salute to you!
And now that we are on the Jagr subject: I want to highlight PK Subban who decided to make a fitting tribute to hockey legend Jaromir Jagr that Jaromir Jagr is by putting on a 68 shirt, a Beyonce wig and a old Jofa lid and the Jagr salute to win the penalty shootout exhibition.....and Jaromir for having a great laugh about it, saying: I called my mum to give her hard time for not telling him he had a younger brother!!!!! this was an absolute gem!
So here the insider blog on the John Scott saga quote/unquote - from puck daddy yahoo blog(wyshinsky):
NASHVILLE – John Scott, captain of the Pacific Division All-Stars, sat on the bench between Taylor Halland Johnny Gaudreau. Their team was leading the final game of the NHL’s new 3-on-3 mini-tournament. The fans would vote on the event’s Most Valuable Player, an honor that included a new car.
Three Twitter hashtags flashed on the Bridgestone Arena video screens, revealing the three MVP candidates selected by the NHL. They were goalie Roberto Luongo of the Atlantic Division, Hall and Gaudreau.
John Scott, who scored twice in the preliminary game and was the single most popular player in Sunday’s tournament, had been snubbed.
“I was sitting next to Johnny and Taylor on the bench, and I said, ‘You guys better give me that van, because I need it,’” said Scott, whose wife is expected to deliver twins this week, to go along with their two young daughters.
What happened next was the epitome of Scott’s surreal All-Star journey: The NHL thudding, clueless reaction to his unexpected popularity; the fans rallying to defend the people’s champion; and the off-script, utter chaos that support causes.
They booed. Loudly. They chanted “JOHN SCOTT!”, loudly. Ther screamed “MVP!” whenever Scott touched the puck.
They pulled out their phones inside the arena, as others did around the world while watching the NHL All-Star Game on Sunday, and tweeted “#VoteJohnScott” again and again and again.
And so it ended as it began: With a fan vote. With people – for various reasons – shoving a career enforcer with five goals in 285 career games to the top of the All-Star voting leaderboard. With the NHL seeking to subvert or deny that will, either through disregard or disqualification. With those fans’ voices growing louder, more defiant, and eventually forcing the NHL to acknowledge the man and the movement.
So the same organization that told John Scott to reconsider his All-Star status because of what “his daughters would think” now had to reconsider their own decision on Scott, as his daughters watched from the stands.
As the Pacific Division won the All-Star Game tournament, 1-0, the NHL had to acknowledge that Scott received the most Twitter votes – although, like with the initial fan vote that got him into the game, no totals were revealed – and was the 2016 NHL All-Star Game Most Valuable Player. (They also probably knew that anyone not named “John Scott” from the Pacific Division team would have been lustily booed by the Nashville fans.)
With that, Scott was lifted off the ice by Drew Doughty and Brent Burns in celebration.
AND.....
The All-Star Game is no longer the solemn meritocracy it was 30 years ago. It’s on its fourth format change in 16 years. Its players are chosen to check boxes on team representation and positional need.
So it’s actually OK if a player like John Scott – who’d never be considered among the elite talents of the NHL but embraced the All-Star experience in ways they could never hope to – wins a fan vote and participates in the game.
That should be the lesson learned here for the NHL, which played a strange role in this fairy tale: antagonist, gatekeeper, snobbish, stubborn, but ultimately essential for Scott’s transformation from a “joke” candidate insurgent to a populist victim of nefarious corporate scheming.
He doesn’t become a cult hero if they didn’t attempt to deny him his achievement. His legion of fans doesn’t become an army if they don’t actively try to prevent this underdog tale to play out, from the moment the fan vote ended to the Coyotes trading him to an AHL fate to an NHL evoking his family in an attempt to guilt him out of the game,
Were it not for the NHL’s fervent desire to see that he wouldn’t be an All-Star, Scott wouldn’t have been one, and certainly wouldn’t have had the fan support to force them to rewrite their MVP script.
“I never believed I’d be in All-Star Game, score two goals, have the fans behind you like that,” said Scott. “I thought I was going to be in the background. Enjoy it behind the scenes. And it definitely didn’t turn out that way. I loved it. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done in hockey, for sure.”
Who know who else thought it was cool?
The coolest guy in the NHL.
“You know what, he truly deserved it. That’s the funniest thing. He deserved it. The fans voted for him and he deserved it. He played good,” said Jaromir Jagr, 43-year-old future Hall of Famer with the Florida Panthers.
“If somebody’s very unwanted, he becomes [a] hero. That’s why I love it. There was the story. The guy was unwanted from the NHL and I think from the NHL, whatever happened today I think it’s probably [one of] the best stories to happen at All-Star Game.”
If JJ thinks this is cool who are we to argue!!!!!!
Coach
They have set up rules for the qualification/selection and when they got a result they didn't like they have tried to discourage and alter the process they have set up, when an also ran - "goon" John Scott - by the will of the fans - got selected to take part in an All Star game. Not just to participate, he got the most votes of any All Star. His own team Phoenix then disowned him throughout this process, trading him to Montreal who demoted him to the farm rather raising above the ridiculous and embracing the situation. So TheCoyotes rather had no player at the All Star Game than A John Scott selected by their fans! shame on you Coyotes! And the League is so out of touch, and so fake - it is frightening! They started to support him only after they realised the shot them selves in the foot and that John Scott was decided to attend and to make his family and fans proud.
And so it ended with the Hockey fans who would not be denied whether the NHL liked it or not.
I must applaud all the NHL All Star players who of course knew how sensitive the issue was and supported the so Charming John Scott at every turn. Their collective middle finger to the NHL top brass was only thinly veiled. A Jagr salute to you!
And now that we are on the Jagr subject: I want to highlight PK Subban who decided to make a fitting tribute to hockey legend Jaromir Jagr that Jaromir Jagr is by putting on a 68 shirt, a Beyonce wig and a old Jofa lid and the Jagr salute to win the penalty shootout exhibition.....and Jaromir for having a great laugh about it, saying: I called my mum to give her hard time for not telling him he had a younger brother!!!!! this was an absolute gem!
So here the insider blog on the John Scott saga quote/unquote - from puck daddy yahoo blog(wyshinsky):
NASHVILLE – John Scott, captain of the Pacific Division All-Stars, sat on the bench between Taylor Halland Johnny Gaudreau. Their team was leading the final game of the NHL’s new 3-on-3 mini-tournament. The fans would vote on the event’s Most Valuable Player, an honor that included a new car.
Three Twitter hashtags flashed on the Bridgestone Arena video screens, revealing the three MVP candidates selected by the NHL. They were goalie Roberto Luongo of the Atlantic Division, Hall and Gaudreau.
John Scott, who scored twice in the preliminary game and was the single most popular player in Sunday’s tournament, had been snubbed.
“I was sitting next to Johnny and Taylor on the bench, and I said, ‘You guys better give me that van, because I need it,’” said Scott, whose wife is expected to deliver twins this week, to go along with their two young daughters.
What happened next was the epitome of Scott’s surreal All-Star journey: The NHL thudding, clueless reaction to his unexpected popularity; the fans rallying to defend the people’s champion; and the off-script, utter chaos that support causes.
They booed. Loudly. They chanted “JOHN SCOTT!”, loudly. Ther screamed “MVP!” whenever Scott touched the puck.
They pulled out their phones inside the arena, as others did around the world while watching the NHL All-Star Game on Sunday, and tweeted “#VoteJohnScott” again and again and again.
And so it ended as it began: With a fan vote. With people – for various reasons – shoving a career enforcer with five goals in 285 career games to the top of the All-Star voting leaderboard. With the NHL seeking to subvert or deny that will, either through disregard or disqualification. With those fans’ voices growing louder, more defiant, and eventually forcing the NHL to acknowledge the man and the movement.
So the same organization that told John Scott to reconsider his All-Star status because of what “his daughters would think” now had to reconsider their own decision on Scott, as his daughters watched from the stands.
As the Pacific Division won the All-Star Game tournament, 1-0, the NHL had to acknowledge that Scott received the most Twitter votes – although, like with the initial fan vote that got him into the game, no totals were revealed – and was the 2016 NHL All-Star Game Most Valuable Player. (They also probably knew that anyone not named “John Scott” from the Pacific Division team would have been lustily booed by the Nashville fans.)
With that, Scott was lifted off the ice by Drew Doughty and Brent Burns in celebration.
AND.....
The All-Star Game is no longer the solemn meritocracy it was 30 years ago. It’s on its fourth format change in 16 years. Its players are chosen to check boxes on team representation and positional need.
So it’s actually OK if a player like John Scott – who’d never be considered among the elite talents of the NHL but embraced the All-Star experience in ways they could never hope to – wins a fan vote and participates in the game.
That should be the lesson learned here for the NHL, which played a strange role in this fairy tale: antagonist, gatekeeper, snobbish, stubborn, but ultimately essential for Scott’s transformation from a “joke” candidate insurgent to a populist victim of nefarious corporate scheming.
He doesn’t become a cult hero if they didn’t attempt to deny him his achievement. His legion of fans doesn’t become an army if they don’t actively try to prevent this underdog tale to play out, from the moment the fan vote ended to the Coyotes trading him to an AHL fate to an NHL evoking his family in an attempt to guilt him out of the game,
Were it not for the NHL’s fervent desire to see that he wouldn’t be an All-Star, Scott wouldn’t have been one, and certainly wouldn’t have had the fan support to force them to rewrite their MVP script.
“I never believed I’d be in All-Star Game, score two goals, have the fans behind you like that,” said Scott. “I thought I was going to be in the background. Enjoy it behind the scenes. And it definitely didn’t turn out that way. I loved it. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done in hockey, for sure.”
Who know who else thought it was cool?
The coolest guy in the NHL.
“You know what, he truly deserved it. That’s the funniest thing. He deserved it. The fans voted for him and he deserved it. He played good,” said Jaromir Jagr, 43-year-old future Hall of Famer with the Florida Panthers.
“If somebody’s very unwanted, he becomes [a] hero. That’s why I love it. There was the story. The guy was unwanted from the NHL and I think from the NHL, whatever happened today I think it’s probably [one of] the best stories to happen at All-Star Game.”
If JJ thinks this is cool who are we to argue!!!!!!
Coach