Blake Is Seating Director

The good news for King captain Rob Blake is that he was voted to the North American team for Sunday’s NHL All-Star game as a starting defenseman.

That’s also the bad news.

Blake is from nearby Simcoe, so friends and family can watch him in Sunday’s game.

Some of them.

“[The players] get four [complimentary] tickets and we can buy four more,” Blake said Friday. “I have 19 people here.”

So, Blake has become something of a social director. Some of the entourage will get tickets for the game, others for tonight’s skills competition and Heroes of Hockey game, which involves old-timers.

It’s worth the effort to Blake.

“Sure, you’d like to rest [for the three-day break], but I’d never turn this down,” he said.

It will be his third All-Star game, his first as a starter.

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Toronto is the capital of the hockey universe, if you buy the story here, but the city is still trying to live down its mayor, Mel Lastman, who at a party to deal with plans for the game, turned to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and said, “It is Gary, isn’t it?”

Not long afterward, Lastman was heard to say, “When is this game anyway?”

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Lastman was around to drop a puck at 8 a.m. Monday for the Labatt Blue NHL Pick-up Marathon. When that hockey game ended three days later, the White team had beaten the Blues, 380-340.

It was somewhat longer than the NHL record, a three-hour, nine-period game between the Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Canadiens in 1936.

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When Tony Amonte of the Chicago Blackhawks learned last summer that the All-Star game would be played Feb. 6, he went to a calendar and discerned that it collided with the date wife Laurie expected their second child.

No problem.

Laurie’s labor was induced, and Tristan Amonte was born Tuesday, in time for Tony to rejoin Chicago for games at Edmonton and Calgary on Wednesday and Thursday, then make it here Friday.

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Boston Bruin defenseman Ray Bourque, who will make his 18th All-Star appearance, has been appointed captain of the North American team. Bourque, who is Canadian, will tie Wayne Gretzky for second-most All-Star appearances. Gordie Howe holds the record, 23 consecutive appearances.

Red Wing defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom, a native of Sweden, will be captain of the World team. Lidstrom has played in three All-Star games and has been voted a starter two consecutive seasons.

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For the first time, the weekend festivities will include two Heroes of Hockey games, one for the pre-expansion era and one for post-expansion players. Several who participated in the first All-Star game, at Toronto in 1947, will be honored, among them Ted Lindsay, Howie Meeker, Woody Dumart, Ted Kennedy, Fleming Mackell, Maurice Richard and Milt Schmidt. . . . The 2001 All-Star game will be played in Denver, and officials of the Minnesota Wild--which will join the NHL next season--are planning to bid for the game in 2003 or 2004. The Kings may also put in a bid for the game, which hasn’t been played in Southern California since it was at the Forum in 1981.