The Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: John Scott, Art Duncan and the 1983 All-Star Game

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's Friday grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter.)

The third star: Todd McLellan would like to talk to you—I feel you Todd. I make this exact face while trying to parent my kids at least a dozen times every day.

(via Reddit)

The second star: Morgan Rielly's fat head—There's so much going on here that it takes repeated viewings for everything to really sink in. The full explanation is here, but the punchline is that the Leafs gave up the winning goal seconds later, because they're the Leafs.

The first star: Matt Stajan is an artist—Hey Matt, want to show us that interpretive dance you've been working on as a metaphor for the Flames season?

Stajan in free fall (s/t — Stephanie (@myregularface)January 20, 2016

The issue: John Scott is an All-Star! No, wait, he's not! But now he is!

The outrage: Are you tired of the John Scott saga yet?

Is it justified: First things first: the NHL gets some credit here for making the right call in allowing Scott to play in next weekend's game if he chooses, which he apparently will. There were no right answers left on the table, but at least the league chose the least wrong option.

Scott will get his all-star moment, one that he didn't earn and never asked for, and a good number of fans will be happy to see it. He'll be the center of attention in Nashville, and get one of the biggest ovations. It's not a feel-good story and never was, but the league and its partners will try to turn it into one because that's really the only choice at this point. And Scott will go out there and do his best, which will be a nice change at an event where most players are simply going through the motions with one eye on the door. John Scott is an NHL All-Star, for one weekend at least, and we all may have some fun with it.

But here's one small request to the league and its players as they get ready to head to Nashville: Let's not turn the whole thing into a weekend-long pity party.

Remember when the league brought in the fantasy draft for the All-Star Game, and fans loved the idea of seeing who'd be picked last? That was fun, but the league was worried about embarrassing players, so it threw in a free car for the unlucky leftover. But that wasn't enough, so last year the league gave cars to both of the final two players and tried to pretend that there was no "last" pick. This year, there's no draft at all, because we can't have nice things. Or not-so-nice things, depending on your perspective. If there's one thing the NHL can't stand, it's the perception that somebody is being mocked.

It's not hard to imagine a similar thought process playing out next weekend with Scott. Nobody wants to see him embarrassed, especially after the nonsense he was put through over the last week. But here's hoping the pendulum doesn't swing all the way to the other extreme, and we end up watching an event that ends up being all about a manufactured John Scott Redemption Story.

After all, the only thing worse than watching a group of all-stars float through a meaningless game at half-speed would be watching a group of all-stars float through a meaningless game at half-speed while desperately trying to set up Scott for a tap-in goal. Yes, it will be fun when—and let's face it, it is "when" and not "if"—Scott manages to mysteriously split the defense and deke out a goalie who picks that exact moment to lose a contact lens and leaves the net open for him. We'll all have a good laugh. But let's all agree to do it once and get it out of our system, without making the whole event a showcase for one guy.

John Scott may not be an all-star talent, but he's a hockey player, not a charity case. If you don't want to embarrass the guy, then let him go out there and play hockey… or at least whatever passes for it in Nashville next weekend.

One of the week's biggest stories was the Lightning's suspension of Jonathan Drouin, who is reportedly refusing to play for their AHL affiliate while he awaits a trade. The situation essentially makes Drouin a true holdout, which is nearly unheard of in today's NHL.

But until the last CBA all but eliminated the strategy, holdouts used to be relatively common. Everyone from star players like Mark Messier, Sergei Fedorov and Paul Kariya to lesser names like Kyle McLaren, Brad Isbister and Anson Carter would find themselves sitting out to force a trade or a renegotiated contract. It's a tactic that literally goes back to the earliest days of the NHL. And that's where we'll find this week's obscure player: Art Duncan.

Duncan was a defenceman who made his debut in the ASHL back in the 1913-14 season. He joined the Vancouver Millionaires of the PCHA in 1915, months after they'd won the Stanley Cup, but was on the roster for only one season before enlisting to serve in World War I, where he saw action as a fighter pilot and earned the Military Cross. Art Duncan was kind of a badass.

He returned to Vancouver to resume his hockey career in 1918 before eventually making his NHL debut with the Detroit Cougars, where he was both captain and coach. He was traded to the Maple Leafs the following offseason, and initially refused to report. That was a fairly common tactic in those days, so much so that the league had just passed a new rule calling for the suspension of players who refused to honor an existing contract or accept a new one. Duncan became the first player to be suspended under the rule, which essentially resulted in him being banned from playing pro hockey.

Duncan eventually joined the Leafs, spending parts of four seasons in Toronto. He retired in 1930 to become the Leafs' head coach, a position he held until he was fired early in the following season and replaced by Dick Irvin.

This week, Brian Burke offered up an argument in favor of increasing the size of NHL rinks. It's a topic that comes up every now and then in the hockey world, with many believing that some extra space would make the game safer, faster and more entertaining.

It's not a perfect plan. International hockey is played on a wider ice surface, for example, and it's often borderline unwatchable outside of the major tournaments. And there are some serious logistics issues in most NHL rinks that would make changing the rink size very difficult, if not impossible.

But there's one objection to the idea that comes up any time the idea is floated, and it's a strange one because it doesn't make much sense: The worry that NHL teams would lose out on revenue from the prime seats that would need to be removed in order to make room for that extra ice.

It's true that teams charge a premium for front-row seats, and that most of those seats would have to go if the ice got wider. But here's the thing: If you take out a row or two of seats, whatever comes next just becomes your new front row. It's not like NHL teams are going to have to start charging third-row prices for seats that are right up against the glass. And don't worry about what the numbers on the aisles say—if there's a few dollars on the line, NHL owners will sprint down and repaint those themselves.

There's still the very real problem of some of those deeper rows being elevated in today's building, which could throw off sight lines for fans sitting in them. And you're still losing seats, and that comes with a cost. But it's not the cost of the front row, and you can bet that those fans sitting in those slightly higher seats will be paying first-row prices to do it. It's weird that we all keep pretending otherwise.

We're one week away from All-Star weekend, and it's fair to say that the build-up isn't exactly going well. Between the whole Scott debacle and the fact that the All-Star Game has become a high-scoring, low-effort affair that's borderline unwatchable, nobody seems to want to watch next week's showcase.

But at times like this, it may be worth remembering that the All-Star Game was never perfect, and having it crashed by weirdly undeserving players isn't exactly a new thing, either. To prove it, let's travel back to the middle of the greatest offensive era of all time, and see what an All-Star Game roster looked like in 1983.

• It's Feb. 8, 1983, and we're coming to you from the Nassau Coliseum, home of the reigning Stanley Cup champion New York Islanders, which is a phrase that sounds really weird to anyone under the age of 30. Pay no attention to the fact that this guy's lips aren't matching his words—that's just how everyone talked back in the 80s.

• I appreciate that he announces the Campbell Conference and then immediately tells us which divisions are in it, because it makes me feel better about the fact that I never did know which was the Campbell and which was the Wales. I don't think any of us did. We all pretended to be furious when Gary Bettman showed up and changed the conferences to "Eastern" and "Western" but we were secretly thrilled.

• Our first player is by far the most interesting, and maybe the closest comparable to Scott. It's John Garrett, a not-all-that-great backup goalie who'd only been in the Campbell Conference for four whole days but wound up on the All-Star team due to a series of weird events that I explained here. He's going to go on to have an interesting night, at least once he's finished almost falling over while trying to skate to the blueline.

• Lanny McDonald and Dave Babych are up next, and we've apparently already established our theme for the evening: mustaches.

• Next up is Tom McCarthy, perhaps best known for being the taken first overall in the 1977 junior draft, ahead of Wayne Gretzky. He was a young winger having a strong year, but his career would derail shortly after. It's a sad but fascinating story.

• We get three more North Stars because this was back when the NHL had few enough franchises that it could do the "one player per team" rule and still have room for actual all-stars.

• Hey, can we just take a moment to recognize the Hart Trophy-caliber performance that this organist is putting up? He is working it. Dropping a "The Saints Go Marching In" when a Sutter is introduced is borderline brilliant. I love this guy.

• Next up are five members of the Chicago Black Hawks, including Murray Bannerman (last seen in this section getting shelled by the Oilers in the highest-scoring game of all time), a young Denis Savard from back when English people were still calling him "Dennis" and Doug Wilson's fantastic hair.

• And, no, that's not a typo—Chicago was called the "Black Hawks" back then. The story goes that the team was called the "Blackhawks" when it was first founded in 1926, then immediately screwed up and added an extra space that stuck around until it was finally fixed in 1986. The Chicago Blackhawks were basically a typo for six decades and we all just apparently agreed to never mention it.

• Hey, we're all on board with loving the NHL's classic orange and black All-Star Game uniforms, right? OK, just checking.

• Next up is Marcel Dionne, who is 31 years old and in the middle of his fifth-straight 100-point season but looks like a chubby guy in his early 50s, because that's what Marcel Dionne looked like for his entire career.

• What was happening when they took Rick Vaive's photo? Did they surprise him in the shower or something? Did a time traveler appear and tell him that his status as the only Maple Leaf to ever score 50 goals would be broken by Gary Leeman?

• The Red Wings' only representative in this game is Willie Huber, in case you were wondering how they managed to finish low enough in the standings to draft Steve Yzerman a few months later.

• We close out with four future Hall of Famers from the powerhouse Oilers, including Jari Kurri (making his All-Star Game debut) and Paul Coffey (fresh off recording the Born to Run album). We also get a young Mark Messier, who throws everyone off by having hair but is still doing that "break into a maniacal laugh for no reason" thing that he'd famously unleash on a terrified Gary Bettman over a decade later.

• Last up is Gretzky, who gets a big ovation because this was back before hockey fans cheered for great players instead of coming up with random reasons to hate them because we're all insufferable jerks.

• We get a (towel-less) wave from coach Roger Neilson, and that wraps it up for the Campbell Conference. If you want to see the Wales Conference intro from the same game, you can find it here.

• As for Garrett, he'd go on to play the game of his life, standing on his head to stymie the Wales All-Star team. He played so well that he was voted the game's MVP, an honor that came with a free truck. Unfortunately for him, that vote took place midway through the third period. Gretzky went on to score four goals in the period, a hasty revote was ordered, and the Great One was named the winner.

• So, yes, Gretzky stole Garrett's truck. The affable goalie took the whole ordeal in good humour, in case you were wondering. But I'd still suggest that any of next week's All-Stars not try it on John Scott.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com.