Dionne Says He Really Wanted to Stay With Kings

Marcel Dionne played a bluff, and General Manager Rogie Vachon of the Kings called it. So Dionne was traded to the New York Rangers and now he’s sorry.

“The bottom line is I never wanted to leave there,” the 35-year-old center is quoted as saying in today’s editions of the Herald Examiner. “I was there for 12 years. I love that organization.”

In a meeting of former teammates and road roommates on March 9, Dionne, the second-leading scorer in National Hockey League history, asked Vachon to trade him. Dionne was hoping Vachon would tell him that somehow things would work out.

Instead, a day later--the NHL trading deadline--Vachon obliged, sending Dionne to the Rangers in exchange for Bobby Carpenter and Tom Laidlaw.

“I’ve never been a good gambler. I go to Vegas and I don’t win anything,” Dionne said. “I rolled the dice again . . . and I lost.

“I’m still a Kings’ fan and I always will be. My heart is still with the Kings, but now my body’s with the Rangers.”

Dionne hadn’t even told his wife, Carol, about his gamble because he figured it would pay off, the newspaper said.

“After it happened, I was never so scared in my life,” Dionne said. “I had to go home and tell her. Well, she wasn’t home when I got there. The phone was already ringing off the hook by the time she did.

“She picked it up, then I told her, ‘Carol, I got traded.’ She threw the phone at me! She said, ‘How could you do this?’ ”

Dionne was floored when he heard the news. For one thing, he figured, Vachon hadn’t been given enough time. He called his agent, Alan Eagleson, at 8:30 the next morning to see if anything was happening.

“He said that Chicago, Minnesota and Quebec were interested,” Dionne recalled. “He said most teams wanted L.A. to pick up half my ($600,000) salary. He said, ‘Deep down, I don’t think the Kings will do it.’ I didn’t think so, either.”

But they did.