from Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star,

Here’s the problem with sports movies: it’s very rare that it doesn’t work out. The first Rocky was a rare example of this, and it won Sylvester Stallone an Oscar nomination for screenwriting. But the art and arc of the sports film is in the mapping of the journey, the depth of the suffering, the unlikeliness of the rise, and the way the victory is depicted. Sports movies, like a lot of movies, have to trick us into caring. Because the happy ending is coming, and everybody knows.

John Scott was the king of hockey this weekend. It wouldn’t have mattered if Sidney Crosby was in Nashville, or Alexander Ovechkin, or Wayne Gretzky. He scored twice. He was the write-in MVP. He was carried around on the shoulders of far better players. As Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reported, Scott’s all-star helmet is headed for the Hall of Fame.

“You can’t write this stuff,” Scott told the members of the media assembled in the city the NHL sold in part to Boots Del Biaggio, the place Jim Balsillie tried to steal back to Canada. The NHL kept Nashville in Nashville, and rewarded it with an all-star game.

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added 8:26am, from Ben Frederickson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,