John Scott has played in 285 games during his eight-year NHL career as a member of the Minnesota Wild, Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers, Buffalo Sabres, San Jose Sharks and his current team, the Arizona Coyotes.

He has scored a total of five goals in those games.

The Coyotes have only dressed him for 11 games this season and let him touch the ice for a grand total of 69 minutes.

His name, as of Saturday, has appeared on the waiver wire more times this season (three) than it has on a score sheet for contributing to a goal (one assist). 

It is, to say the least, not the type of resume you expect from an NHL All-Star. But despite all of that, and even though the NHL hasn't yet admitted it, Scott likely received more votes in the 2016 All-Star fan vote than any other player in the league and along with Jaromir Jagr, Alex Ovechkin and Patrick Kane is going to be one of four captains for the 2016 game in Nashville.

He was leading when the fan vote ended on Friday night less than 24 hours before the captains for the game were announced, and the league oddly refused to acknowledge the number of votes any player received in its official release announcing the winners, something it almost always does. 

So how did a player whose only real hockey skill (if you want to call it that) is fighting other players just like him, during an era where his role is nearly extinct and the one thing he excells at is rapidly disappearing from the game, end up getting into the NHL's yearly exhibition where defense and physical play simply do not exist?

It was the Internet, of course

The NHL has had to deal with things like this before, with fans using the online voting process to take an otherwise obscure player and try to vote him into the All-Star game.

It has always failed. Until now. Perhaps it was a down year for voting and opened the door for this sort of thing to happen, or maybe hockey fans were just more coordinated and committed to the joke. Whatever the reason. It happened. 

The most famous attempt prior to the Scott voting was during the 2007 fan vote when a little-known defenseman for the Vancouver Canucks by the name of Rory Fitzpatrick skyrocketed to the top of the vote after the NHL encouraged fans to vote for a player as many times as they wanted.

There was a Vote For Rory website (it is still online) and cheesy YouTube videos dedicated to the joke, including "attack" ads on the likes of Nicklas Lidstrom and Scott Niedermayer.

This one was particulalry absurd. 

This was all during a season where Fitzpatrick would appear in only 56 games and score one goal to go with six assists. Before that season he had played in 210 NHL games, scoring only nine goals in his career. He would only play in 19 games in the league after that season. 

But just as it appeared as if the Vote For Rory campaign was going to pay off, something funny happened. He ended up in third place behind Lidstrom and Niedermayer in the fan voting for defensemen, didn't get selected to the game, and it was immediately believed that the NHL stepped in and fudged the numbers to prevent it from happening (and the league almost certainly did). 

As the Scott vote rolled on, one of the most fascinating things to watch was whether or not something equally fishy would happen here, especially as the NHL seemed to go out of its way to avoid bringing any attention to the fact he went nearly wire-to-wire in first place. Compared to All-Star votes in recent years, the NHL seemed to pay almost no attention to this year's vote, and Scott's presence at the top was almost certainly the reason why. 

Shortly after the fan voting opened, Scott's name was almost immediately near the top of the results. It started to get attention on Reddit (the first Reddit thread on the Scott vote campaign came on the second day of voting when he was 56th in the league in voting) with a couple of prominent NHL voices, including Yahoo's Greg Wyshysnki and podcaster Steve Dangle calling for Scott to get voted into the game. 

Once things like that start happening, the snow ball has already turned into an avalanche and there is no stopping it.

Once Scott's name started to climb up the rankings there were other obscure players that started to see their names get more votes, but none of them caught on like Scott.

And it seems obvious as to why.

The NHL All-Star game is supposed to be a showcase of skill, talent and creativity. But the reality is that it is also viewed as kind of a joke because nobody really tries, the players are going at half speed, and defense isn't even considered optional, it just simply does not exist.

So why not make it really absurd by voting in the one player that is the exact opposite of what everybody else in the game is? 

John Scott is in the NHL All-Star game. (USATSI)
John Scott is in the NHL All-Star game. (USATSI)

So this is bad for the league, right? Wrong!

For a game that nobody will admit to caring about, there are an awful lot of strong opinions about who actually gets to play in it. 

The integrity and dignity argument, of course, is insane.

John Scott did not ask for this. He urged fans to not vote for him and give their votes to his more deserving teammates. But they didn't. They continued to vote for him, and he has every right in the world to show up to the All-Star weekend in Nashville and enjoy that moment. He doesn't owe anybody anything else.

And the idea that the All-Star game has any kind of integrity is outrageous. It is a game for players to mess around, have a fun weekend away from the daily grind of an 82-game regular season and potentially two-month long playoff run, and try things they would never, ever, ever, try in a game because they would get destroyed for it, both on the ice and in the media.

The funny thing about all of this, of course, is this might actually be a good thing for the NHL. It might even get a few more people, even if it's an insignificant amount, to tune in and pay attention to a game they would otherwise ignore.  

Let's face it, the NHL All-Star game as an exhibition of skill or a meaningful game is dead. It has been dead and it is going to continue to be dead. If it wasn't, the league wouldn't feel the need to try and reinvent it every three years to boost insterest, whether it was the failed North America vs. The World concept, the fantasy draft, or this year's 3-on-3 mini-game tournament. If people cared about the game for what it is and were tuning in to watch, they wouldn't have to try these new ideas. It seems inevitable that there is going to come a time where the game no longer exists. 

But a player like John Scott in the All-Star game. That might get some attention, even if it's not intentional. 

Was the whole process of getting him in the game a giant joke by Internet pranksters or perhaps some sort of statement on how irrelevant the game is overall? Probably. But let's face it, there is some intrigue here to see what he can do in this type of environment because it's a setting we never see him in. Even the worst players in the NHL possess an obscene level of talent when compared to the random person in your adult beer league. They can still skate circles around the overwhelming majority of the population. And I will admit, I am kind of interested to see what he does. 

But that's not even the most important thing. If there is one thing that NHL All-Star game is good for it's seeing the personalities of players when they are off the ice. Whether it's during the skills competition, or during a pre-game fan-fest, or even during the game with the type of access you don't get during a typical game, you get a better sense for what these guys are really like. 

Even though I have no use for John Scott's regular role in the NHL, he is the type of personality that could excel during the All-Star weekend. When he is not on the ice, he is a character, from wearing a T-shirt with a picture of him scoring one of his few goals, to video-bombing a teammate's interview. That's the type of thing this weekend is about, and Scott might actually be a refreshing change.