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John Scott opens up about All-Star Game drama, why he’s playing

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If you told John Scott that you voted for him to get into the All-Star Game because you thought it was a funny idea, he probably wouldn’t be surprised.

He’s well aware that, as he put it, “at some point, without question, it was a joke” and he knows that he doesn’t deserve the title of All-Star, but that doesn’t mean he feels like he’s deserved the treatment the league has given him as a result of the fan vote.

Scott opened up about those feelings and shared firsthand insights about his hockey journey to this point in an article for The Players’ Tribune. It’s a detailed and great read that you really should check out, but here’s a small excerpt that’s at the heart of why Scott ultimately decided to go along with the fans’ wishes to see him play:

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.

Scott in some ways literally fought his way into the NHL, but he’s not an NHLer because he likes to fight. He’s an NHLer because he’s passionate about the game and is willing to take on the role that he feels benefits his team.

The All-Star Game is ultimately there to entertain the fans and the vote is the fans’ way of expressing what they find as entertaining. And in picking Scott, intentionally or not, it’s created an underdog for a game that usually doesn’t have those and has allowed us to gain insight on a man that most only knew for the role he played on the ice.

Related: NHL shop runs out of John Scott All-Star shirts