NHL All-Star Game : Getting There Wasn’t Any Fun for Dionne

Center Marcel Dionne of the Kings had a rough time getting here for the 37th National Hockey League All-Star game, which will be played tonight at 5 (PST) at the Olympic Saddledome.

The Kings played in Pittsburgh Sunday night and Dionne was scheduled to catch a flight to Chicago and connect with a flight here Monday morning. On the way to the Pittsburgh airport, Dionne’s taxi was nearly broad-sided by a car that skidded out of control and across two lanes of an icy freeway.

When Dionne got to the airport, he discovered that his flight had been delayed for 30 minutes because the plane had to be de-iced.

Dionne decided to get a haircut in the airport barber shop and almost missed the flight. The jetway had already been rolled back, but the plane was held up after a reporter had the pilot radio back to the gate and have Dionne paged.

“You must be important,” a stewardess quipped as Dionne bounded onto the plane with his bags.

“I told the barber that I only had 10 minutes,” Dionne said.

After all of that, the plane sat on a runway for almost 45 minutes because of freezing rain, and arrived in Chicago almost 1 1/2 hours late.

On the approach to Chicago, the plane was about to land when the pilot suddenly pulled the nose up and began climbing again. “Sorry folks, but there was another plane on the runway that couldn’t get out of the way,” the pilot announced. “So we have to go back up again.”

Dionne said, though, that that wasn’t the scariest moment he had ever had on a plane. “A couple of summers ago I was on my way to London to play in a hockey tournament and one of the engines blew up over the Pacific Ocean as the plane was taking off from Los Angeles,” he said.

When the plane arrived late in Chicago Monday, Dionne thought he had missed a connecting fight to Calgary, since there was no plane at the departure gate.

It turned out that the plane hadn’t even arrived, though, and the flight to Canada was delayed for almost two hours.

Dionne finally arrived here almost 11 hours after he had left Pittsburgh.

When Dionne got here, he was told that he had been named a co-captain of the Campbell Conference team, along with Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers.

Campbell Conference Coach Glen Sather of the Edmonton Oilers said that Dionne will be playing on a line with Brian Sutter of St. Louis at left wing and Miroslav Frycer of the Toronto Maple Leafs at right wing.

Tonight’s game will look like a rematch of the 1984 Stanley Cup final between the Oilers and New York Islanders.

Al Arbour of the Islanders is the coach of the Wales Conference squad and Sather is the coach of the Campbell Conference team.

The Campbell Conference’s top line consists of Gretzky at center, Jari Kurri of the Oilers at right wing and John Ogrodnick of the Detroit Red Wings at left wing.

Gretzky said that after the first shift, Sather will probably replace Ogrodnick with Edmonton left wing Mike Krushlynski. Gretzky, Kurri and Krushlynski are the Oilers’ No. 1 line.

The Wales Conference top line consists of center Brent Sutter, left wing John Tonelli and right wing Mike Bossy of the New York Islanders.

The last two NHL All-Star games have been high-scoring contests since players tried to score as many goals as as they could to win the most-valuable-player award and the car that goes with it.

Said Greztky, who was named MVP after scoring four goals in the 1983 game: “There’s not a lot of emphasis on defense. I think it will be a high-scoring game, like last year.”

NHL Notes Tonight’s game will be telecast live by the USA cable TV network. . . . The NHL all-stars will participate in the recording of a music video by several Canadian superstars to benefit Ethiopian famine relief. . . . Three players are out of the game. Defenseman Bill Hajt of the Buffalo Sabres has a a shoulder injury and has been replaced by Mike Ramsey of the Sabres. Left wing Tony McKegney of the Minnesota North Stars has a separated shoulder and will be replaced by Steve Payne. Defenseman Mark Howe of the Philadelphia Flyers is sidelined with a chest injury.