Oilers Are Abundant in NHL All-Star Game : Eight on League Title Team Skate for Campbell Conference Tuesday Night

The National Hockey League All-Star Game will be played in Alberta for the first time next Tuesday night, with 10 players who make their livings in the province skating for the host team.

But eight of those players are members of the Stanley Cup-champion Edmonton Oilers, the team people in Calgary love to hate. Only defensemen Paul Reinhart and Al MacInnis of the Calgary Flames made the Clarence Campbell Conference team for the game.

The preponderance of Oilers on the Campbell team should be no surprise. The Oilers have the NHL’s best record and an assortment of stars ranging from super scorer Wayne Gretzky to conservative defenseman Kevin Lowe to a pair of excellent goalies, Andy Moog and Grant Fuhr.

Gretzky and Moog will start along with Oilers defenseman Paul Coffey and right wing Jari Kurri. Detroit left wing John Ogrodnick and defenseman Doug Wilson of Chicago are the other starters.

“It’s great to see so many of the guys making the team,” said Gretzky, the five-time NHL Most Valuable Player and the most prolific scorer the game has known. “It’s a great honor to be picked as one of the best at anything you do and it means a lot for the Oilers. It shows how highly people regard the Oilers.”

One of those people is, of course, Glen Sather, the Oilers’ coach and general manager. Sather added three of his players--forwards Mike Krushelnyski and Glenn Anderson and Lowe--to the four Edmonton starters and Fuhr, the backup goalie.

“These guys are All-Stars because of how they’ve played,” said Sather. “They deserve it.”

The other Campbell worthies are center Dale Hawerchuk, right wing Paul MacLean and defenseman Randy Carlyle of the Winnipeg Jets; center Marcel Dionne of the Los Angeles Kings; left wing Brian Sutter of the St. Louis Blues; center Thomas Gradin of the Vancouver Canucks; Toronto’s Miroslav Frycer, who can play both wings, and Minnesota’s Tony McKegney, who can man all three forward spots.

The Prince of Wales Conference squad has been dominated by the New York Islanders in recent seasons. This year, the Isles’ “Canada Cup Line” of center Brent Sutter, left wing John Tonelli and right wing Mike Bossy will start.

The other Wales starters are Boston Bruin defenseman Raymond Bourque and Washington Capital defenseman Rod Langway, plus goaltender Tom Barrasso of the Buffalo Sabres. Two Capitals--center Bob Carpenter and defenseman Scott Stevens--made the second team, along with goalie Pelle Lindbergh and right wing Tim Kerr of the Philadelphia Flyers, defenseman Chris Chelios of the Montreal Canadiens and left wing Michel Goulet of the Quebec Nordiques.

Al Arbour, coach of the Islanders, will handle the Wales team. His additions were Islanders center Bryan Trottier, Washington right wing Mike Gartner, New Jersey center Kirk Muller, who also can play left wing, defensemen Bill Hajt of Buffalo and Mark Howe of Philadelphia, right wing Anders Hedberg of the New York Rangers and centers Ron Francis of Hartford and Mario Lemieux of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who was the No. 1 selection in last summer’s amateur draft.

Two of the NHL’s greatest players, goaltender Glenn Hall (Campbell) and recently retired right wing Guy Lafleur of Montreal (Wales), will serve as honorary captains.

The NHL Board of Governors will meet Monday and Tuesday. NHL President John Ziegler will have the happy task of reporting that about two-thirds of the league’s 21 teams are either making money or breaking even.

There will be some discussion of a proposal about increasing the number of first-round playoff games from five to seven. But the NHL Players Assn. probably won’t go along with that, preferring to use the issue in bargaining for a new contract.

The board is expected to talk about several issues discussed last month by the league’s general managers, including a look into the rash of injuries this season.

The league wants to make a change in the waiver draft, allowing each team to protect 17 skaters and two goalies from their system. Various players out of juniors or from Europe also are exempt.

An alteration in the compensation system will be discussed. Currently, when a team drafts someone from another team, it must drop a player from its protected list. The new format would not allow the club which lost the players to replace him with the one dropped. Instead, the players dropped would go into a pool and, in the next round, would be available for each team as replacements, beginning with the 21st ranked team.