The NHL All-Star Weekend was underway in Nashville and there was a man no one would have ever thought to be there. John Scott, the 33 year-old enforcer had the most fan votes to be captain of team Pacific Division in this year’s game. John Scott started the year playing for the Arizona Coyotes (a Pacific Division team) and was put down to the minors over a month ago. Nonetheless fans all over the United States and Canada voted Scott to be the captain of team Pacific Division and the player to represent the Arizona Coyotes. Many don’t understand how puzzling his announcement is, and to put it in perspective Scott has 5 goals and 6 assists in his ENTIRE 7 year career as well as having 542 penalty minutes in that span. So the idea of him being an All-Star was pretty much a joke.

Well at the end of voting for this year’s All-Star Game he finished with the most votes of any player. Ever since then he has been the people’s man. He had been scrutinized by the NHL it seemed relentlessly, and he was even traded. He and Victor Bartley were traded to the Canadiens for Jared Tinordi and Stefan Fournier. This caused many in the NHL to think Scott would be replaced with another player from the Coyotes roster such as: Max Domi or Oliver Ekman-Larsson but this was not the case. He stayed in a sort of limbo as he had been playing in the AHL until this weekend. Many articles circled that John Scott was “not a real All-Star” and this seemed as if the NHL and its writers weren’t fans of the 33 year-old. Whether they were or not didn’t seem to matter to NHL fans from many teams around the league and even non-NHL fans threw their support behind the 6’8” enforcer. It took until the week before the NHL All-Star Weekend to secure that John Scott would be attending.

As of a week before the start of the actual All-Star weekend in Nashville, All-Star shirts with players names went on sale in the NHL store in New York and online. Within a few days all the John Scott shirts were sold out. Friday (the start of the NHL All-Star Weekend was the media day and John Scott was mobbed by press, so much so that he actually took a photo of the media taking photos of him (what a guy). In the talks with the media he said he just wanted to have fun, and have fun he would. Saturday Night was the Skills Competition, and when the players were introduced, Scott was chanted as loud as the hometown players. He even got a good laugh as he was introduced just after the hometown rival Chicago Blackhawk, Patrick Kane (the NHL leading scorer) was met with brash boos. Since Scott had no NHL team, he chose to wear his All-Star captain jersey and adorned it well. He participated in the Hardest Shot competition, in which he was cheered on by the fans and the other All-Stars on both shot attempts.

Every player there loved spending time with the giant enforcer and many players said they wanted to get his autograph. This shows the loving spirit of the team sport that hockey is and will continue to be. Everyone will be rooting for the large teddy bear of a man to win it all on Sunday as he and team Pacific Division will face the other division teams in a 3-on-3 tournament style game setup in which the winning team splits 1 million dollars. This is a large sum to Scott who makes league minimum $575,000 on an AHL deal. In the end whether he wins or loses, the people have stood behind Scott and wish him the best after this weekend. In the spirit of the movie "Dead Poet’s Society," oh captain my captain.