With the 2023 NHL All-Star fan vote results announced Friday night, it has me reminiscing about one of the most shocking all-star selections in NHL history. At the 2016 NHL All-Star Game, John Scott was selected to the All-Star Game as a captain for the Pacific Division by fan vote.
John Scott was a journeyman enforcer who, at the time of his all-star MVP victory, had five goals, six assists, and 11 points in 286 games as well as 542 penalty minutes in his entire career. None of those stats resemble an all-star caliber player.
The 6’8 260 pound enforcer had only played in 11 games for the Arizona Coyotes by the time of the all-star game and had not even scored a goal yet. So how did Scott end up an all-star?
It all started when the NHL announced some changes to the All-Game Game. The All-Star Game featured a new playing format of a 3-on-3 single elimination tournament where each division has a team as opposed to the traditional Western Conference vs Eastern Conference game at normal 5-on-5 play. Also, instead of the normal three 20 minute periods of play, these game would contain two 10 minute halves.
Another change that the NHL announced is that the all-star rosters were going to be decided by fan vote. Now, fan votes have been around for a long time in the NHL all-star games, but none of them have ever produced the drama that 2016’s vote did.
A little while after the NHL made these announcements, Sportnet’s Jeff Marek made a joke on his podast, Marek vs. Wyshynski, with Yahoo’s Greg Wyshynski about the idea of Scott playing in the 3-on-3 all star format because of his size and skillset.
Some of the podcast’s listeners found it funny as well and started to entertain the idea of Scott being on the all-star team. The next thing you know, the word has spread all over social media, especially Twitter and Reddit, and there are a lot of people who are actually serious about voting Scott into the All-Star Game.
When the NHL opened the polls for the All-Star Game roster fan vote, it was already at the point where a lot of hockey fans were set in stone that they were going to vote for Scott. At first, Scott was getting a good amount of votes, but not enough for him to get all-star attention.
As time went on though, the campaign to get Scott to the All-Star Game continued to grow with the help of social media. Scott continued to rise up the rankings with every passing day because of how fast his “fandom” grew and how they were determined to get him to the All-Star Game.
It did not take long for the unthinkable to happen, John Scott took over as the top vote-getting player in the entire NHL. The joke of the hockey side of the internet was becoming a reality right in front of everyone’s eyes, and the NHL did not like it.
When the polls opened for fan voting, the NHL said it would release weekly voting updates for leading vote-getters, but once Scott took over as the number one vote-getter, the NHL stopped releasing weekly updates on the voting. By the time that the fan voting came to a close, Scott was still number one in the NHL, earning him captain of the Pacific Division All-Star team.
The results came with mixed emotions across the league from fans and NHL personnel. Although Scott was the top vote-getter, there were still many fans that did not want him to be an all-star because he was taking a spot away from someone else who deserved to be on the all-star team. It also seemed as though that people high up in the NHL felt the same way and there are conspiracies that the NHL stepped in and tried to force Scott to not participate in the All-Star Game.
It has been confirmed though, that the NHL tried to persuade Scott to back out of the All-Star Game. After the All-Star Game, Scott wrote a piece on The Players’ Tribune and he wrote about how he got a phone call from NHL personnel and that they tried to convince him to back out of the game by asking him if he thinks his kids will be proud of him for participating in the game given the circumstances. Scott also confirmed that this conversation helped in his decision to play in the All-Star Game.
“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,” said Scott in The Players’ Tribune.
The mischief did not stop there for the NHL though. There are more conspiracy theories that the NHL forced the Arizona Coyotes to make moves with Scott to make him ineligible to play in the All-Star Game.
Just a couple weeks before the All-Star Game, the Coyotes sent Scott down the AHL, and then just a few days later, the Coyotes traded Scott to the Montreal Canadiens. By trading Scott to an Eastern Conference team, that disqualified Scott from participating in the All-Star Game because he was no longer able to represent the Western Conference or Pacific Division by the rules.
This trade set off an uproar on social media. Both the Coyotes and the NHL received a lot of backlash from the trade and thousands of thousands of people made it known how they felt on social media. Hockey fans were calling out NHL Commissioner, Gary Bettman, accusing him of forcing the Coyotes to make this trade so Scot would be ineligible to play.
It was also not just the fans that suspected this. Most people were thinking it was the case, and TSN’s Bob McKenzie did not clearly say the trade was forced from the league, but the way he words this tweet makes it seem like it was.
With the amount of backlash that the league was getting, the NHL finally decided to let Scott participate and be the captain of the Pacific Division All-Star team.
The whole process of getting to the All-Star game was an emotional rollercoaster for Scott who at first was not sure if he wanted to participate in the All-Star Game in the beginning. Scott had also mentioned in The Players Tribune that he knew he did not deserve to be on the all-star team and hoped to not make it on the team. Over time, however, Scott slowly changed his mind and not only decided to play, but he was also excited to play.
Finally, on January 31, 2016, John Scott stole the show at the All-Star Game at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. What started out as an innocent joke, has turned into reality.
Not even a minute into the first game against the Central Division, Scott got a pass in front of the net and buried it in to get the Pacific Division on the board. After dropping to a knee and scrapping the ice with his hand in celebration, the Nashville crowd gave him a standing ovation.
Later on in the game, Scott would score again, this time on a partial breakaway to extend his team’s lead to 5-3. The Pacific Division would go on to win that game 9-6 to clinch a spot in the final round against the Atlantic Division.
The final game was a low-scoring affair that only saw one goal and it came from Anaheim Ducks’ Corey Perry. The Pacific Division won 1-0 to win the All-Star Game tournament and the All-Star Game MVP, which was decided by fan vote, was no surprise.
Scott was voted All-Star Game MVP by the fans, and even other NHL teams on social media and as he was accepting his award, loud “M-V-P” chants came roaring down from the crowd, and Scott’s teammates even picked him up and raised him on their shoulders.
Since Scott was awarded All-Star Game MVP, there was one other thing he got as a prize. On top of the nearly $91,000 he got from winning the All-Star Game tournament, Scott won a brand new car as well.
The 2016 NHL All-Star weekend was magical and filled with unforgettable moments and even though the NHL personnel may not have wanted Scott involved in the tournament, I am sure their minds were changed after they saw how Scott was treated and how the fans reacted to it all.
This all-star weekend ended up being kind of a perfect send-off for Scott’s career. After the weekend was over, Scott went back to the AHL and would stay down there until the Canadiens would call him up to play one more game in the NHL on April 5, 2016.
That would be the last NHL game that Scott would play because he announced his retirement when the season ended.
Before that all-star tournament, John Scott was only known as a journeyman enforcer that really had no other value to his teams other than fighting and sticking up for his teammates. But now when you ask hockey fans who John Scott is, the 2016 All-Star Game is most likely the first thing that is going to pop up in everyone’s heads.
This whole saga had a big enough impact to where there is actually a movie being made as you read this about how everything went down for Scott leading up to and during the All-Star Game. There are not very many hockey movies that are based on real events. That just shows how amazing this whole story is.
Now, with the 2023 All-Star Game rosters finalized with the fan vote filling out the last three spots in each division, another year has gone by where there were no jaw-dropping selections like Scott was in 2016. Everyone who made it on the roster this year, all have had legit all-star standard seasons to this point so far.
Given how much attention this whole saga has brought to the NHL, I am pretty surprised that Scott is the only player to have this happen to him. Every year it seems that everyone has that one player that they always joke about voting into the All-Star game but Scott remains the only player that fans actually went through with it.
I do understand though, that if this sort of thing were to happen more often, it would lose its appeal fast. Stories like this should be a one-time thing because of how special they are. But it still surprises me that this sort of thing has only happened once ever.
Maybe one day down the road we will see another story similar to John Scott’s. But for now, hockey fans all over the world will hold onto the fond memories of John Scott stealing the show at the 2016 NHL All-Star Game.
Jack Writes 
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