Only one memory sustains itself from all the NHL All-Star Games. That was 1991, when Chicago Stadium trembled from the noise during the Star-Spangled Banner, just as U.S. soldiers were headed to Gulf War I.

Those with grayer sideburns talk about the years between 1947 through 1950, and again from 1953 through 1968. The defending Stanley Cup champions would play the best of the rest of the league.

“That was the best format ever, by far,” Darryl Sutter said Wednesday, before the Kings played Colorado and then observed the All-Star break.

Take the 1962 game, in which the champion Toronto Maple Leafs played host to the All-Star team. Rumble the tympani first, then introduce Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, Bernie Geoffrion, Norm Ullman, Alex Delvecchio up front, with Doug Harvey and Pierre Pilote in back and Jacques Plante, Glenn Hall and Gump Worsley in goal.

Have you ever seen a Hall of Fame get up and skate?

And yet Toronto won, 4-1.

“It was like a playoff game,” Sutter said. “There were only six teams then.”

Waiting for an NHL job to come open was like waiting for the cable guy. The game meant something to the stars, but it meant more to the defending champs, and everything to the home fans.

And the champs had an 8-10-2 record against the stars, including wins in the final two.

Then the NHL added six new teams, none of which figured to win a title anytime soon. Suddenly the game had to be moved around. It was East vs. West, which morphed into Wales vs. Campbell. You can imagine the intense bar arguments when you got Wales and Campbell fans together.

Then it became North America vs. The World, then back to East vs. West. The last one of those happened in 2009, when the East won, 12-11, in a shootout. First guy to backcheck gets fined.

Eventually the All-Star Game fell victim to the Olympics, and to lockouts, and became a choose-up-sides competition between designated captains.

This year the game finally reverses its plunge into trivia. There will be four division all-star teams in Nashville that will play 3-on-3, which is also the highly-entertaining overtime format in all games this season.

And the 11 players on the winning teams will split $1 million in bonus money.

Unfortunately, no one has repealed the Fans Voting Rights Act. The mischievous partisans elected John Scott, who has 542 penalty minutes in 285 NHL games, along with five goals. Scott made the Pacific Division team because he played for Arizona. Then the Coyotes traded him to the Canadiens, and now he plays for the St. John’s White Caps. Still, he will captain the Pacific in Nashville, and presumably won’t get windburn as the action blasts past him.

Granted, the champs vs. stars game usually happened before the season started. But that’s not so bad. The NHL season deserves to be trumpeted, instead of sneaking in beneath the World Series.

In general, the so-what factor has consumed All-Star Games throughout.

The Pro Bowl is such a wash that they play it before the Super Bowl, which means NFL MVP-to-be Cam Newton won’t be there. Baseball players bail out of their All-Star Game like they heard a tornado siren.

NBA players still love their game, primarily because All-Star Weekend is the social event of the season.

So why not All-Stars vs. Blackhawks on Sunday at the United Center? Would Jim Cornelison, the throaty anthem singer, just drop the mic and give up?

“You can’t do it now,” Sutter said. “It’s the schedule. We’re playing all those games in, what, 190 days?”

You also can’t do it because All-Star Games have outlived their original function. They now belong solely to the sponsors and marketeers.

The first baseball All-Star Game, in 1933, was tied to Chicago’s World’s Fair. Arch Ward, a sportswriter and promoter, pushed the idea as a way to bring Depression-strapped baseball fans back to the parks. It helped that Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Jimmie Foxx and Lou Gehrig played. Comiskey Park was full, and Ward later claimed that fans from 46 of the 48 states attended.

Today’s stars are overpromoted already. All their games are televised, all their thoughts are Tweeted, all their preferences commercialized. And they carry too much investment to risk a silly injury.

“I just want them to have fun and not get hurt,” said Sutter, who will coach the Pacific in Nashville.

What he really wants is Alex Ovechkin and Tyler Seguin lining up against Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, with Drew Doughty/Erik Karlsson waiting behind, in the twilight’s last gleaming.