So long and thanks for all the fists (Puck Daddy Countdown)

(Ed. Note: The column formerly known as the Puck Daddy Power Rankings. Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)

2,452,456. The NHL

No one could have handled the John Scott thing, from front to back, worse than this league did. But as they've so often found out in the past, some things are just screwup-proof. Everyone loving John Scott specifically because of how the league tried to twist him at every turn was inevitable.

If this league was run competently, I'd almost believe it was a wrestling angle from the start. But Gary Bettman is no Vince McMahon, so this was just then “I Didn't Do It'-ing their way into the best thing the league has done in years.

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3. The Skills Competition

It was good.

2. Going 3-on-3

It was also good.

1. So long, and thanks for all the fists

There was only one thing in hockey to talk about at any sort of length this week, and that's the storybook capper to a bizarre NHL career.

At this point it seems extremely likely that John Scott will never be back in the NHL. If he ever is, it won't be for very much longer. The odds of a 33-year-old enforcer who was traded and immediately demoted (likely to keep him out of the All-Star Game in the first place) getting back into the bigs after only 11 games played this season seem quite slim.

So in a lot of ways, this was a send-off for John Scott.

A warm pat on the back that started out as an anti-establishment joke. It ended up as this really touching coming-together of fans and players that highlighted the power they still hold in a game being increasingly seized by the owners and management.

But in another way, this was a send-off for what John Scott was.

A warm pat on the back to thank the one of the dying vestiges of hockey's bad old days with the proxy being perhaps its very last true enforcer, a 6-foot-8 monster to whom all other enforcers paid awed homage even as they dropped the gloves secure in the knowledge they'd almost certainly be beaten bloody. It ended up as this really touching coming-together of fans and players that highlighted just how much reverence they have for a hockey role they grew up with, but which their children will certainly not.

As highlighted in Scott's ghost-written piece for the Player's Tribune, there just aren't a lot of “guys like him” any more. And that's for a lot of reasons:

1)    Teams are getting smarter about how they allocate cap dollars and roster space. “Guys who play five minutes a night and exist almost solely to punch the other guy who plays five minutes a night” simply cannot be high on the priority list any more for competitive teams.

2)    The way the game itself is played has changed a lot, and teams are also starting to recognize that enforcers only enforce behavior in other enforcers, and even then, only most of the time. Violence breeds violence among that class, but because a Milan Lucic-type (talented player who also plays dirty) is loath to actually fight enforcers in 2016, they serve little real purpose in and of themselves.

3)    Concussions are scary and make former players do scary things. No one wants blood on their hands any more. Especially not with lawsuits coming.

So while it didn't necessarily start out this way, this All-Star Weekend, with its loving crowds of adoring fans and press alike (with the line between them often blurred) hanging breathlessly on every word Scott had to say, every step he took both on and off the ice, was a bon voyage to Scott and everything about this sport he represents.

The League loathed his inclusion, much as it loathes the aspects of the game enforcers represent. There's an argument that fighting should continue to exist because fans and players love it. That's a difficult argument to actually swallow unless you're already a supporter; it pulls no one to the other side. But this weekend serves as proof positive that boy, everyone really does like enforcers, and perhaps not just because they beat each other into concussions for our entertainment.

Scott showed this weekend that enforcers are quick with a joke — the burn on dopey old Jeremy Roenick was out of control — and very, very likable. It helps when the League stops operating in the shadows to shoo them out of the sport, as it has done for the last two weeks or so, and just actively tries to step on their toes. Gives fans even more reason to root for a guy just like the guys they've been rooting for their entire lives.

Again, Scott is the enforcer taken to its logical extreme. None have ever been bigger, none have ever been more fearsome in combat, none have ever been more aware or self-deprecating of their limitations as a player, and by all accounts none have ever been as likable away from the rink. Scott was the Platonic ideal of everything we'll think of enforcers as being 25 years from now when hockey hasn't produced one in a decade or two. He'll be the, “In my day, we had players like him to make sure things were on the up-and-up,” from old-timers that everyone under the age of 30 will be sick of hearing about.

In a way, the “Is this something your kids would be proud of?” question from the awful unnamed League employee is a question the League is asking of enforcers about their job. “Do you think your kid would be proud that you fought guys to earn a paycheck in hockey?” is a close approximation of what they really mean, and obviously that's an out-of-bounds, almost unforgivable question to ask someone. Whether getting in 38 regular-season NHL fights — and going 32-5-1 by the reckoning of the brawler-backers at HockeyFights.com — is something Scott “should have” been doing to support his family is not up for debate. It's simply unfair to ask.

But if Scott perhaps starts to lose bits and pieces of his memory (in much the same way Phil Bourque has) a decade or three down the line, the question might become, “Was it worth it?” And judging by how everyone but the NHL treated him this weekend, and the smile as wide as Broadway on his face, the answer right now is very much in the affirmative.

All this for John Scott, last of the mighty dinosaurs, who got to show off some of the actual skill that got him to pro hockey in the first place. And even as it phases out “guys like him,” Scott gave us all a reminder of just what's so great about this great game, and what's often so bad about the NHL version of it.

But most important, he showed that the latter doesn't always hold sway over the former.

(Not ranked this week: Pekka Rinne.

Rinne stopped John Scott on a breakaway. If he'd just let him score, that would have been a hat trick for the MVP, and about 1 billion hats donated to local charities.

Thanks a lot, Pekka. You can't do anything right.)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)