Did They Honestly Not Expect This?

Don Cherry is reprimanding the internet.  This will go well  

Yeah...the internets don't take very kindly to criticism.  Especially from 81 year old Canadian curmudgeons.  

So, to understand today's Sametime Status, we have to take a couple steps back to talk about hockey.  Every non-Olympic year, the NHL puts on an all-star game.  Because nobody gives a blue crap about all-star games, the league has struggled with finding ways to make it profitable enjoyable.  They've done North American players versus the rest of the world's players, Eastern Conference vs Western Conference, a fantasy hockey draft...all to no avail.  People still didn't care.  

So now, we have a new 3-on-3 divisional tournament.  The first period features the Pacific Division versus the Central Division.  The second period will have the Atlantic Division take on the Metro Division.  The third period will pit the winners of the first two periods against each other in a winner-take-nothing-all fight to the finish.  Guess what...nobody cares.  

To spice things up, the league decided to let the fans choose the team captains, then have the league fill out the rest of the rosters.  As you might expect, the fans went Internet all over the voting, and things took a turn.  

The 2016 All-Star Team Captain for the Pacific Division team is none other than John Scott.  

Unless you're really into hockey, you don't know who John Scott is.  John Scott is a 6'8" enforcer who over the course of his NHL career has averaged a goal every 57 games.  He is not what one would describe as a "Skill Player."  He received the highest number of votes of anyone in the Pacific division, but the final tally is a mystery since the league removed all traces of standings and the voting as a result of the fan campaign to select Scott.  Go ahead...try to find it.  I dare you.  

Fast forward a couple of days, and John Scott was traded to the Eastern Conference.  Conspiracy theories abound that this trade was made simply to restore the "dignity" of the All-Star Game, since his skill set is in remarkably short demand league-wide, and the team that traded for him immediately transferred him to the minor league.  If this were the case, people got very indignant about the league pushing for this to happen in order to override the fan vote, and deny Scott the ability to play for the prize money (Yes, the winning team gets to divide up a cash prize for winning the tournament.  No, the Pacific division is not going to win, regardless of Scott's participation).  Also, an NHL player is now assigned to an AHL team under an AHL contract, with himself and his family forced to move across two countries to relocate to his new team.  All so that the league isn't "embarrassed" by having a different type of player in its All-Star Game.  If the conspiracy theories are to be believed.  

Conspiracy theories aside, hockey (And Fashion) genius Don Cherry took it upon himself to use his TV segment "Coach's Corner" to take the fans to task for voting John Scott into the All-Star Game and setting this whole chain of events in motion.  He Began This Rant by calling the fans on the internet voting "You jerks..."  Yeah...the internet is probably going to have something of a problem with that.  You can watch the entire video, if only to hear the theme song the second time at the end.