You don’t want to make too much of Tom Scott dropping the puck.
You certainly don’t want to make it into something dramatic, like an 81-year-old and a last wish. It’s just that after holding Red Wings season tickets since before “American Bandstand,” he couldn’t think of anything else he wanted to do at a hockey game that he hadn’t done already. “He can’t skate,” says his wife, Marge, “let’s put it that way.” So when Detroit closed out its regular-season schedule this month against Chicago, it was Scott who stepped out on a red carpet for the ceremonial face-off. The players banged their sticks on the floor of the bench area in appreciation, which was nice. But what made the event memorable for the Red Wings is what Scott did later. It wasn’t something he did to get his name in the paper. But it ties in nicely with something the Wings, coach Mike Babcock and their TV outlet are doing tonight — see the accompanying story — and it was something team captain Nicklas Lidstrom says he’s never seen before. Scott’s first season tickets were in the third row behind the Red Wings’ bench at Olympia Stadium. The season was 1956-57, and the seats cost $6 per game. That was before glass separated the teams from the customers, “and your children could learn all the cuss words in the world without going to school.” The next year, he relocated to the front row of the balcony — not out of prudishness, but so big linesmen couldn’t block his view.
Over the decades, as he and Marge raised four kids and he built two solid businesses, the Red Wings mostly floundered. The team has won four Stanley Cups since 1997, but Scott was there for the lean years, and he can tell you it was …