Fight Card – The Predictably Horrible Reaves-Scott Fight, 02-19-12

Chicago Blackhawks enforcer John Scott’s second fight in as many games came at the hands of St. Louis Blues enforcer Ryan Reaves. Many Blackhawks fans had clamored for this fight to happen, and thought Reaves was “ducking” Scott. Ducking a 6’8”, 270 pound behemoth is easy to do when you’re six inches shorter and (approximately) 30 pounds lighter than the other guy, who can’t skate anyway and has always been a general liability on the ice. To put it bluntly, if Scott were still a forward like he was in his Minnesota Wild days, he’d make Reaves look like a Selke candidate. Even an admitted Reaves fan-boy like me can admit to THAT being pretty damn hard to do.

So the fight finally happened at the end of the Blues/Blackhawks game on Sunday afternoon when the game was out of reach, and the results were predictably awful for everyone involved – both players and fans alike. If you wish to blind yourself, have a look at it:

If you can pick a winner out of that dog-and-pony show, you’re better than I am. Scott landed a few punches, then fell over because, as mentioned earlier, the dude can’t skate to save his life (just ask Vladimir Sobotka, a young man almost literally half Scott’s size, how good Big John is on his skates). Reaves landed maybe one punch while the two were still standing, but then punched Scott in the back of the head at least once (perhaps twice?) while Scott was down. That is an INCREDIBLY big no-no in my book. This is either a draw or a “non-fight fight”, your choice. And given what transpired, I fully expect a rematch, unless Scott is, y’know, waived before then. Which hell, who knows, he might be. He’s not good at that thing called “playing hockey competently”, even compared to Reaves. Which, again, is amazingly horrendous.

To put it even more bluntly . . . the spirited shoving between Jamal Mayers and BJ Crombeen was worth more of the price of admission than this incident between Scott and Reaves was. And that, again, is predictable.