The Zambonis:

Great Scott

As told to: Joe Pack

The Zambonis are a band from Connecticut that’s written hockey songs since 1991. Dave Schneider read John Scott’s piece in The Players’ Tribune Friday morning and quickly wrote and released a song in tribute to the All-Star enforcer that night. The song can be heard and purchased at their bandcamp page here.

What a crazy triumph. It’s unbelievable.

I read that Players’ Tribune piece on Friday morning, drinking coffee. I love when there’s an intellect from a part of the game that you don’t usually think of. I want a smart game involved with a great game. I’ve met many enforcers and I’ve always enjoyed chatting with them. I wrote a song about Eric Godard on our last record. There’s another story: a guy that fights, gets sent down and then he comes up and wins the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins. That article is just so moving in so many ways, and so classy.

I proceeded to send it to all the Zambonis saying, “read this, it’s amazing, we’ve gotta write a song about this right now.” I got in touch with Tim and asked what he was doing at 6 p.m. Give me three hours, let’s just record a song about John Scott tonight.

That was it: he was 20 minutes late, I was out of there at 9 p.m., he sent me a mix on my phone, I called him back and said turn the bass down, I went home and put it up on bandcamp and by 9:50 I was watching Bill Maher on TV. A friend of mine from NBC heard it and said he would bring it up in the office tomorrow. NHL on NBC tweeted it out Saturday and it had just been an idea hours before.

Stick tap to @TheZambonis for the tunes!

— NHL on NBC (@NHLonNBCSports) February 1, 2016

The article was from the heart and the song was from the heart.

You always look for a spark to ignite the song. “My All-Star gloves,” that’s what got me from his article. That’s the song right there. His gloves are just objects but it was a beautiful way to describe something he probably should have never had. They’re mine, these are my gloves. It was that simple.

His wife was incredible too. I mean, I love my wife but if she was there (and I was John Scott) she might have just screamed at someone, “Oh great, now we’re moving to Newfoundland!” It’s challenging trying not to be sad about the situation too but I think he just got a movie deal, that’s what came across the wire. I don’t have a wire. But he’s getting endorsement deals. Hopefully our song ends up in that movie and if it doesn’t, I give up.

I mentioned Ziggy Palffy in a song and within three weeks of putting the song out he retired. He just disappeared. Last year I wrote a song about Zdeno Chara and if he retires I’ll stop writing songs. But this one may have worked if he gets that movie deal.

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And there was Jagr out there which was just bizarre. He’s the happiest he’s ever looked. I had a friend who was a Ranger with him in New York. I went out for dinner with the guy after a game and he was saying that Jagr wasn’t a team guy, that the coach was telling us what went wrong and all of sudden Jagr just said, “Tom, Tom, enough. We’ve heard it already.”

We played at the 2002 All-Star game in L.A. and it was fantastic. It was one of the best things we’ve ever done. The players were lined up outside our dressing room and I had to ask Patrick Roy and Mario Lemieux to step out of the way so that we could go on stage. It was cool.