DALLAS - Edmonton Oilers winger Ales Hemsky admits he was caught off-guard when told Tuesday morning he was going to the NHL all-star game in North Carolina in three weeks.

“I don’t know how I got there, but I am happy to experience it for the first time,” said Hemsky, who has only played 27 games, missing a month of play — 13 games — due to a groin muscle tear. Hemsky does have 24 points this season, but that’s still a pretty small body of work for him.

Hemsky was chosen before for the YoungStars game, which has been subsequently scrapped as a useless exercise of 4-on-4 shinny, but he was hurt at that time. This time, he’ll be one of 36 players invited by the NHL to accompany the six fan-voted starters: goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, defencemen Kris Letang and Duncan Keith and forwards Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews and Evgeni Malkin, all chosen in online balloting.

Team captains for the Jan. 30 game in Raleigh will be voted on by the 42 players. They will most likely select Crosby and Lidstrom, captains of the Penguins and Red Wings. “For sure you have to have a Swede as one captain,” kidded Dallas winger Loui Eriksson, who will also be at his first all-star game, along with Dallas centre Brad Richards. Eriksson is eighth in NHL scoring; Richards is sixth.

The captains will pick their respective teams on Jan. 28 and the game will be televised on TSN. It won’t matter what conference the players are from. The only niggling concern for one and all? Nobody really wants to be the last guy chosen.

It’s possible that Hemsky’s getting the nod because every NHL team must be represented. But Taylor Hall and roomie Jordan Eberle were chosen for the rookie skills contest on all-star weekend, so they didn’t necessarily have to choose the Czech forward for the game.

Whatever the reason, he’s glad they did choose him. “There’s a lot of good players not there (including Henrik Zetterberg, Nicklas Backstrom, Mike Richards and Pavel Datsyuk, who has a broken hand), but I will take this and have some fun. I was going to Vegas with my girlfriend. Now I will cancel that,” he said.

Four teams — Buffalo (Edmonton native Tyler Ennis), Islanders (Michael Grabner), Phoenix (Oliver Ekman-Larsson) and Florida (Evgeni Dadonov) — only saw rookies picked.

Oilers coach Tom Renney leans on Hemsky, playing him more than any other forward (18:55). He’s one of his few plus forwards (plus 2). “I like his commitment to 200 by 85, playing the whole ice,” said Renney. “You hope when there’s a bit of a change in a team and they’re trying to redefine themselves, that players will step up and Ales certainly has.”

Hall and Eberle (fifth and sixth in rookie points with 23), will join 10 others — including Boston’s Tyler Seguin — for the rookie skills competition.

“Our two young fellas have been everything we asked of them to this point of the season,” said Renney.

Hall will play centre against the Stars Tuesday night with Hemsky on right-wing and Dustin Penner on left. It’ll be Hall’s first crack at the middle in the NHL, and he’ll be going against Richards.

“We’ll have a look at it,” said Renney, who slept on the idea overnight. He had Hall in the middle at the morning practice and will throw him into the deep end against Richards, who has 49 points, three more than his linemate Eriksson. “The defensive zone awareness is probably the biggest concern.”

Renney will play his normal first-line centre Sam Gagner on the second line with the Swedes Linus Omark and Magnus Paajarvi. Taylor Chorney, recalled from Oklahoma City, will partner another AHL call-up — Jeff Petry — on the third defence pair. J.F. Jacques will be the fourth-line winger with Zack Stortini, while Steve MacIntyre sits and it appears Nikolai Khabibulin will be in net.

jmatheson@edmontonjournal.com