Sunday, January 17, 1999
Dionne hangs tough, with no regrets
Cyclones star ready to shine in IHL All-Star Game
BY JOHN ERARDI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[dionne]](/editions/1999/01/17/dionne_180x173.jpg)
Gilbert Dionne scores a goal against Orlando last Wednesday.
(Craig Ruttle photo)
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He is the youngest of eight children ... is 19 years younger than his Hall of Fame brother, Marcel ... was raised in a household of girls ... left his French-speaking home in Quebec at 15 to try to make it in the English-speaking world ... played six years of junior hockey and nine as a pro ... played 223 games and scored 61 goals in the NHL ... won the Stanley Cup with the Montreal Canadiens at age 23.
Hockey has broken his nose and his jaw, and — a year ago on New Year's Eve — slashed his neck with an opponent's skate that narrowly missed his jugular.
If you're looking for an athlete of warm, human dimension, Gilbert Dionne is your man.
Gilbert Dionne has been to Reds games.
The city's famous baseball team is all Dionne knew of Cincinnati when he first considered an offer two years ago to come here to play hockey.
“Pete Rose and the Big Red Machine,” says Dionne, smiling.
![[dionne]](/editions/1999/01/17/dionnefamily_150x178.jpg)
Dionne with wife Heather, son Blake, 7, and daughter Kayla, 4.
(Ernest Coleman photo)
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And he was barely old enough to remember that, because the Big Red Machine was nearing the end of its run by the time Dionne had strapped on his first pair of skates as a young boy growing up in Quebec Province, Canada.
But he ate up the TV images of all of North America's most famous sports teams and athletes ... including brother Marcel, 19 years older.
“We'd watch Marcel play on TV, and my father or mother would say, "See, that is what you need,'” Gilbert recalled. “I didn't like it — I'd walk away sometimes, like, who cares? — but I took it. I had enough pressure being Marcel's brother. "When is it going to stop?' But then I'd think, well, maybe I could try that move, and it made me a better hockey player.”
Marcel was not only good, he was great, a god in Canada whose name is known to every sports fans in America, even to those who wouldn't know a red line from a blue line. Marcel ranks third in NHL history as the game's greatest scorer behind only Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe.
But Gilbert Dionne's story is no “younger brother” tale.
His story is his own.
By the time Gilbert came into the world, Marcel and his brother, Renald, who was only 18 months younger, were winding down their junior-league hockey careers in St. Catherine's, Ontario.
Two years later, Marcel, 20, was in the NHL, playing for the famous Montreal Canadiens, and Renald was out of hockey.
Meanwhile, Gilbert and his family — Mom, Dad, and Gilbert's five older sisters — moved back home to Drummondville, Quebec.
Linda, Guylaine, Lorraine, Chantal and Marlene, who was the youngest of the girls but still five years older than the baby of the family, Gilbert, were more than happy to have a male of the species with whom to play.
And Gilbert, a natural joker and entertainer, was more than happy to oblige. He'd do anything to make his siblings laugh.
“My sisters would put me in dresses, high heels, skirts, bras, makeup and when Marcel would come home for two weeks during the summer — he'd be the attraction — and we'd put on a modeling show for him,” Gilbert said.
Sacre bleu!
“You're going to make a girl out of him!” Marcel exclaimed.
And then everybody would burst out laughing.
“I've seen it all,” Gilbert says. “I've seen a lot of heartbreak. My sisters breaking up with their boyfriends. So, from all that, I think I understand women pretty well. And even before our son, Blake, came along, I understood kids. I'd been baby-sitting my sisters' kids all my life.”
But Gilbert was no drag queen in the making.
Across the street from the Dionne home in Drummondville, was St. Mary's Elementary School, where an outdoor ice rink awaited. Gilbert would escape there to play hockey with his buddies, interrupted only by supper, after which the game would resume. When Gilbert's buddies couldn't play, Gilbert would round up sister Marlene, a good athlete who loved hockey, to trade slap shots.
Gilbert loved the game, but showed none of skills of the precocious Marcel. At 13, Gilbert had no speed, was short and overweight.
But, at the age of 14, Gilbert began his growth spurt. Five-foot, 9 inches tall, he shot up to 6 feet by his 15th birthday. One day, in the midst of this, his father, Gilbert Sr., sat him down and popped the question.
“Are you ready to play hockey? Are you ready to make the move?”
Am I ready to play hockey?
A hockey player is all Gilbert could ever remember wanting to be. When he was 14, he had seen Marcel play in person for the first time at the Montreal Forum. Gilbert had sat up high in the rafters where the visiting players tickets were. In his purple-and-yellow LA Kings jersey with “Dionne: 16” on the back, he rooted madly. After the game, he'd go downstairs into the visiting players' lockerroom.
A hockey player?
“I'd be sitting there and watching guys like Charlie Simmer, and Dave Taylor and Rogie Vachon and Pat Quinn the coach, and I'd be thinking, “Wow, I want to be a hockey player,'” Gilbert remembers.
“I wanted to speak so much to those guys. They'd say, "Hey! Marcel's kid brother! How ya' doin'?' About all I could do was nod and smile and say, "Yeah, fine.'”
What other life could there be?
“When my brother's teams would come into Montreal or Quebec, he would buy as many tickets as he could and have all the family in,” Gilbert says. “After the game, we'd go out to dinner and then go back to the hotel and my brother would get a big room and my aunts and uncles would sit around and we'd talk about everything that's been going on since we'd seen him.
“It was the greatest thing ever. I wanted to see Marcel as a brother, not just as a hockey player. I never had a chance to see him when I grew up.”
And, yet, Gilbert's father knew what Gilbert couldn't yet fully appreciate. Leaving home would be a major adjustment.
Not athletically ... but culturally.
Gilbert didn't know hardly any English.
Oh, he had had an English class one hour a day for two years in junior-high school in Quebec, but language training is worthless as a conversational tool unless one moves into the culture in which that language is spoken exclusively.
Which is what Gilbert was going to have to do: leave his French-speaking family in the French-speaking province of Quebec, and move into English-speaking Ontario with the Boone family in Niagara Falls. But his daily education had to be at a French school, so he made the daily, 25-minute trip by bus to Welland.
The first two or three months were a nightmare. Gilbert called home almost every night.
“Mom, I don't know what to do. I feel like coming home.”
“Endure les moments difficile,” his mother responded. “Plus tard tu ne le regretera pas.”
Translation: Hang in there through the tough times. You won't regret it.
And that is what he did.
“I got out of my cocoon,” Gilbert says.“I sat there for three months, listening and watching, being teased. But I had confidence, growing up in a big family, that I wasn't going to get pushed around.
“My attitude became, "The only way I'm going to learn is to start speaking. I get it wrong and people laugh, so what?' If I wanted ketchup for my French fries, I had to ask. After three months of not speaking English, I was getting sick and tired of bacon and eggs for breakfast. I wanted cereal. I wanted toast. I had to learn to ask for it.
“Down the line I knew that I'd have two languages and that the guys who were laughing at me would never come out of their experience with anything more that one language — English.”
And that's the way it turned out.
And now, whenever Gilbert is traveling with his hockey mates or family and a French interpreter is needed, they turn to Gilbert.
“Being bilingual is great,” he says. “It's very handy. When I see my buddies in Ontario, they say, "Gilbert, do you remember how we used to tease you about your English?'”
He tells them — in lightly-accented, but otherwise perfect English — that, yes, he remembers.
Endure les moments difficile.
He has never regretted it.
“I'd have liked the opportunity to go to college, but my English wasn't good enough,” Gilbert says. “But that gave me even more desire to make it in hockey. I saw it as my only way.”
Tonight, Gilbert will participate in the “skills” competition before the All-Star game at the Crown ... even though he doesn't expect to fare well.
His score-making ability is improvisational, fueled by the ebb and flow of the game. He has a good, hard slap shot, but otherwise considers his raw skills to be rather normal.
“There'll be targets to hit, and I can't guarantee I'll hit even one,” Dionne says. “But if you tell me I have to go high (i.e. fire a high shot on a low-riding goaltender) in a game, I guarantee you'll I'll do it.”
And yet, when his brothers-in-law come to see him play, they say:
“You have the same thing as Marcel: you "see' the play that others don't. You have the vision.”
“I love to pass the puck,” Gilbert says. “"I have a harder shot — a good slap shot — something Marcel didn't have. But that's all I have that Marcel didn't have. Marcel had speed, a little more talent somehow and the ability to take the game, to lead it, to finish the game with a win.”
Goals don't come easily for Gilbert.
“I have to take the slash, the hook, the cross-check, the glove in face, the punch in the nose, to get a goal,” he says. “It's where I play: around the net. I play this type of game that Marcel never had to play, because he was a center. He'd dish it off, he'd shoot, he'd stay around the perimeter. I have dig in there, work hard every game to get my goal.”
A year ago on New Year's Eve, in a Cyclones game in Ft. Wayne televised back to Cincinnati, Gilbert was slashed by a skate across the throat. The ice went red.
“What's going on?” Blake asked. “Daddy's bleeding.”
Gilbert got up, skated to the lockerroom, was stitched up — 25 of them — and returned to finish the game. It is the Canadian hockey player's way: you get stitched up, you play. You always play.
But Gilbert is no madman.
He played through the shock and the emotion, but a couple of days later realized how narrow was his escape.
“The skate was a quarter-of-an-inch from cutting my jugular,” he says. “Taking a skate in the throat made me realize how much I appreciate life.”
Hockey has broken Gilbert's nose and his jaw, but a mere cold or vaccination needle reduces him to a baby. His wife, Heather, shakes her head at such a mystery.
“What can I say?” Gilbert says. “I'd rather be punched in the nose than slapped in the face. That tells you right there: it's not just me, it's all the players I've met in hockey.”
The scar above his right eye is not from hockey.
“My cousin and I were chasing each other in the dark and collided,” Gilbert says. “Fourteen stitches.”
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Dionne would love to win the Turner Cup that goes to the winner of the post-season tournament in the IHL. So would coach Ron Smith, who despite a gaudy three-year record as Cyclones coach (157-95-35; .610) has never won it.
Smith wants Dionne to bring this cup-winning mentality to the Clones.
It came up in one of their earliest conversations in 1997.
“You won The Cup,” Smith reminded Dionne.
“That was four years go,” Dionne responded.
“Yeah, but that won't leave you. You know what it takes to win that. You were there.”
“That's true, I know what it takes.”
“We want you to win the Cup here.”
“I'll do my best.”
The Cyclones are in second place in the Northeast Division, one point behind the Detroit Vipers and two points ahead of the Orlando Solar Bears — who are the best three teams in the entire Eastern Conference of the IHL.
The Cyclones have one of the better lines in the league: Todd Hawkins, at right wing, the banger who creates space; center Todd Simon, the crafty play-maker, and Dionne, the sniper, on the left side. They've been together two years now. Simon and Dionne, who both got off to slow starts, are heating up now. Going into Saturday's late game at Michigan, Simon had 39 points (13th in the IHL in scoring) and Dionne, with 41 points, is 9th. Last year, they were second and fourth, respectively. Dionne's 42 goals last year were the most by a Cyclone since 1993-94.
Dionne had a 16-game point-scoring streak, longest in the league this season and second longest in team history, before it was snapped Saturday. The longest Cyclone streak is 17.
Dionne is a veteran of five NHL seasons: 223 games, in which he scored 61 goals and had 78 assists.
He'd love to get back to NHL someday.
“I want to to go back and win the Stanley Cup again,” Dionne says. “You wouldn't believe how great it is. I've been trying to explain to the guys how much fun it is. Not just the partying, but the fact that people come up to you and say, "You're Gilbert Dionne? You won the Stanley Cup with the Canadiens? Give me five!'”
“I ask them, "I was an inspiration to you?'”
“And they say, "you brought some good hockey to Montreal.'”
He still gets that sort of reaction?
“Sure do,” he says.
In Canada?
“Yes, but in Cincinnati, too.”
The Dionnes live year-round in the Anderson area. Gilbert and Heather will again host a Super Bowl party. Gilbert, who isn't much for spicy food, hasn't yet tried Skyline Chili, but otherwise has fully immersed himself in Cincinnati culture.
Not that he doesn't enjoy the occasional lunch of fried baloney and mashed potatoes.
He likes the steaks and conviviality of El Coyote's, the restaurant on State Road, and the hangouts on Main Street in downtown Cincinnati. At home, the Dionnes have become close friends with the Tetros, whose son, Jake, plays hockey with seven-year-old Blake.
The Dionnes will make a summer trip back home to Quebec to visit Gilbert's family. Gilbert's sisters will talk English to Heather. She will talk French to them, even though neither knows the others' language well. They will laugh about the young Gilbert in high heels.
“Hey, how to do think I got these good-looking calf muscles?” Gilbert will ask, standing on his tiptoes.
Heather's father, who wasn't a hockey player, but loves the game, was raised in a big family in Newfoundland. The two families — Gilbert's and Heather's — get along famously. At the wedding, Gilbert saw it first-hand.
“The Frenchies” (Gilbert's family from Quebec) and “The Newfies” (Heather's extended family from Newfoundland) had a wonderful time, despite the language barrier.
“I take pride that Heather has some "Newfies' in her, and now Blake and Kayla do, too,” Gilbert says.
The Pittsburgh Penguins — and 12 other NHL teams — will have scouts at tonight's All-Star game. Gilbert attended the Penguins training camp this year.
Marcel, 47, lives in Buffalo, and travels throughout Canada and some U.S cities playing with the NHL's Hall of Fame hockey team. He and Gilbert talk periodically, but because of the age difference, the relationship is more father-son than it is brother-to-brother.
“Marcel asks me about everything but hockey,” says Gilbert, smiling. “I say, "Hey, don't you want to talk about my hockey?' But he's more interested in what I'm going to do after my playing days are over. I'm appreciative of what he did for me. When I was in junior hockey, he helped me out financially, got me a car.”
Blake's sister, Kayla, 4, skated around with Dad and the other Cyclones one Sunday morning at the Crown and said she enjoyed it. She said she wanted to take skating lessons, which she's doing now.
“She hasn't shown any signs of wanting to play hockey, yet,” Gilbert says. “She likes ballet, figure skating and tea time in the afternoon with me.”
Blake is on the traveling squad of his CAHA team (Cincinnati Amateur Hockey Association). Someday, if Blake wants to play junior hockey in Canada, he could live with grandma and grandpa or his aunts in Quebec, and do what Gilbert did in reverse: go from an English-speaking family and culture, into the French.
“Heather's not too sure about having him do something like that,” Gilbert says. “Blake is "Mama's boy.' But so was I. If you want to play hockey, at one point you have to move out and go.”
Gilbert says he won't push Blake.
“Being the younger brother of a famous hockey player was hard enough for me,” he says. “People would tell me what to do, and I'd say, "Well, OK, but I'm not him.' I don't want Blake saying, "I'm not my dad.' I want him to have fun. That's what I did when I was his age. Just carrying the name on your back is enough pressure. Who cares (about the name)? Let's go play hockey. It's a game after all. I want Blake to know that.”
Blake plays all sports.
“I'm not going to come down here (to Cincinnati) and try to reverse the entire history of American sport,” Gilbert says. “But Blake knows hockey will always be in him because of our family. It is there if he wants it.”
Do you want to be a hockey player someday, Blake?
“I already am,” he says.
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![[dionne]](/editions/1999/01/17/dionne_500x481.jpg)
![[dionne]](/editions/1999/01/17/dionnefamily_421x500.jpg)