If you could sum up what kind of player Scott Mellanby is in one short, simple statement, you could probably say "This guy never gives up. Ever."
Scott Edgar Mellanby hasn't been smashing any scoring records, nor is he making the big bucks, but he has his heart in the game more than most of your high scorers and high rollers in the game of hockey. He never gives up. His team could be down 8 to 3 in the third period. He won't give up then. He'll score a goal if he can and he'll smash some opposing players into the wall. His team could be down 4 to 1 in a do-or-die playoff game and he won't give up. In fact, that's when Scott Mellanby cranks it up a notch. There could be a night where his team falls flat in every category - offense, defense, goaltending - and it seems like no other has shown up to play, Mellanby will be the only guy on the team that did. He won't quit, even where everybody else has or would. Even when his mother died of cancer a few years ago, he took several games off then came back and scored a goal. He even almost had his left arm amputated in 1989 after a barroom brawl (broken beer bottle) sliced four tendons in it as well as a nerve and an artery. It was repaired and he returned to the ice. Those examples epitomizes the type of player Scott Mellanby is: no matter how much adversity comes his way, he skates right through it and knocks it out of the way.
Stats
Scott Mellanby was born on June 11, 1966 in Montreal, Quebec and put on a pair of skates for the first time when he was just 3 years old. He is 6' 1", plays right wing and shoots right. His jersey number is 19. He is married to a wife named Susan, has two sons named Carter and Nicholas, and has a daughter named Courtney. In his 22-year career he racked up 364 goals, 476 assists (good for 840 points), and 2,479 penalty minutes in 1,431 NHL games played. In 136 playoff contests he's notched 24 goals, 29 assists (53 points) and 216 penalty minutes.
History/Highlights
After playing hockey at the University of Wisconsin, Scott Mellanby was drafted by the Philidelphia Flyers. In the 1986-87 season, his rookie season, he led the Flyers in rookie scoring with 32 points (11G, 21A) and scored his very first NHL goal on October 11 while playing against Washington. At the end of the 1990-1991 season he was dealt to the Edmonton Oilers after scoring a 20-goal season. He only spent two seasons there, scoring at least 20 goals each year. In 1993 he was claimed in the expansion draft by the Florida Panthers and would spend the next eight seasons there as one of their best players and from September 11, 1997 until the spring of 2001 he was their captain. In 1996 he took the Panthers to the Stanley Cup Finals, his second trip there, where they lost to Colorado. Scott is Florida's all-time leader with 157 goals, 197 assists, 354 points, 66 power play goals and 552 games played. In 2001 midway through the season he was traded to St. Louis for David Morisset along with a 2002 fifth round draft pick or compensatory pick, which turned out to be a steal for the Blues. At the end of that season he enjoyed a trip to the Western Conference Finals with the Blues and scored key goals against Patrick Roy and the Avalanche, but unfortunately lost the series. Over the next few years he would become a favorite player of many Blues fans because of his aggressive play and leadership. In the 2001-2002 season he notched his 300th career goal and became the first player in NHL history to get that many goals without ever scoring a hat trick. The next season, though, he would finally get that hat trick, and thensome. On March 6, 2003 he not only got a hat trick, he went on to score four goals and all of them were power play goals. That was a Blues franchise record for most power play goals in one game. At the end of that season he finished fifth on the club in scoring with 57 points and finished third on the team with 26 goals, marking the sixth time in his career he has notched 25-or-more-goals.
Scott scored 14 goals and 17 assists in the 2003-2004 season, his last with the Blues, as he came out of the sea of free agency in the summer of 2004 a member of the hapless Atlanta Thrashers where he provided much-needed leadership. His Thrashers team very nearly made the playoffs for the first time in their short history, coming only a few points shy of the Big Dance in 2006. His 12 goals, 22 assists, and +5 that season were on par with his production and defensive awareness that he'd had with his last few seasons in St. Louis and combined with his leadership he was no small part of Atlanta's success in getting a winning season and almost getting to the postseason.
In 2006-2007, Captain Scott Mellanby did lead the Thrashers to their first post season appearance, scoring 12 goals and 24 assists along the way. He didn't have any points, however, in the Thrashers' four-game ouster at the hands of the New York Rangers in the playoffs. After that, on April 24, 2007, he announced his retirement at 40 years old, the first Thrashers player to retire as a captain of the team. He believed that he had had a rich NHL experience, and his only disappointment is never having won Lord Stanley's Cup.
Scott founded the Mellanby Autism Foundation, which hosts a golf tournament and auction every August to benefit autism research. His dedication to this cause is mostly because his son Carter is severely autistic.
Sources: www.stlblues.com, espn.com, wikipedia