This is a hockey blog. I'll try to make it interesting.

For a guy with the sense of humour I have (thanks, Dad)--I take things way too damn seriously.

Hockey, for instance.

There's this NHL player named John Scott. You are instantly forgiven if you've never heard the name in your life: a player more different from Wayne Gretzky would be kind of hard to find. He's 6'8", has played 285 NHL games, and has five goals and six assists for his career.  Five hundred forty two penalty minutes, though, which SHOULD tell you all you need to know about John Scott.

It should, but, inexplicably, it doesn't.

You see, John Scott was voted by the fans to be captain of an All-Star team this year. If you're wondering how that happened...so am I. Fans are permitted to vote up to ten times a day (also inexplicable--imagine that in federal elections!) and evidently some social-media fuelled prank went viral.

This kind of thing has happened before with the NHL All-Star Game, which hasn't been a real game since sometime in the late '70s. Fan voting was instituted in 1985 and every now and again the fans take it upon themselves to elect...unusual choices to the game. The NHL, wanting to restore at least some dignity to the event, restricted the fan vote to just the captains of the teams, and John Scott is what the fans think an All-Star captain looks like, I guess.

The NHL shares my idea of what an All-Star is and isn't, and they were anything but happy with the fans' choice. First they asked him to gracefully step aside so he wouldn't deprive an actual hockey player of a place in the game. Then they (sssshhhh!)...orchestrated a trade that sent Scott from Arizona to Montréal, where he was immediate dispatched to the minors and thus made ineligible to participate. (Montréal didn't want Scott included in the trade they made, and were told they had to take him. Hmmm.)

I have been flamed to a crisp online for suggesting that John Scott is not an All-Star. I get it: the NHL handled this poorly. They should have let him play (as of now, thanks to a public relations shitstorm, he may still be allowed to). They should let him play...and then scrap fan voting altogether, if this is the kind of thing that results from it.

I say this in spite of the fact the NHL All-Star Game is the only hockey my wife pays the slightest attention to, precisely because it's fun. I appreciate the fun in it myself: Carey Price, the Montréal Canadiens' goalie and perennial All-Star, and Alex Ovechkin, the Washington Capitals' Russian dynamo, are both huge jokesters and make the game a real hoot and a half to watch.

Carey Price is arguably the best goalie in the world right now (when healthy) and Alex Ovechkin is one of the all-time great goal scorers. My point is both of them belong in an All-Star Game, no questions asked. If you let the John Scotts and Joe Blows of the game be All-Stars instead...why bother with the game at all?

This is not a popular opinion, but it's mine. I have nothing against John Scott the man, but I have quite a lot against John Scott the hockey player.