ssh basically sets up a secure connection between two hosts, then forwards its standard input to the standard input of a program on the other side.
You can sort of simulate scp by something like:
cat my_file | ssh me@example.com "cat >my_remote_file"
I use that enough that I didn't need to look it up. Works the other direction as well. Was common with rsh before ssh existed.
It's not as efficient as rsync, but I can tell where files will end up without re-reading a man page.
#!/bin/sh
cd $1
shift
exec "$@"
tar c files | ssh dest cde /some/dir tar x