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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Blanchette: Ray Whitney deserves to be first Chief to have jersey retired

Former Spokane Chiefs player Ray Whitney has been recognized as one of the top 50 players in Western Hockey League history. (Frank Franklin II / Associated Press)

Like many a Canadian boy, Ray Whitney was to hockey born – his dad was the practice goalie for the Edmonton Oilers during the Wayne Gretzky years, and Whitney one of the team’s stickboys. Before that, at age 5, he was set loose on skates for the first time, stick in hand.

Instant player.

“After one year,” he said.

Tough rookie season?

“I couldn’t stand up very well,” Whitney explained. “I got one goal my initial season. We played the boys against the moms, and the moms let me score a goal. It was my only one.”

Hey, moms are the best. They know sometimes all a kid needs is a little confidence.

But even the most sanguine of hockey scouts would have had trouble imagining what was in front of Ray Whitney – be that 5-year-old Ray or the 5-foot-9, 160-pound teenager who during his time in Spokane scored on Western Hockey League teams as if Mom had left an open net.

We’re talking about the 22-year National Hockey League career – a longer run than “Law & Order,” for perspective, but short of the “The Simpsons.” The 1,000-plus points. The Stanley Cup ring.

Now this: his No. 14 Chiefs jersey going up in the rafters of the Spokane Arena, the club wisely making Whitney its first such honoree, even if it meant waiting it out until he had managed to wring every last drop from his skills.

It all goes down before tonight’s game between the Chiefs and Seattle, and Whitney allowed that “being the first one will be fun.”

And, let’s be clear, that’s a Chiefs jersey going up, not one of Whitney’s NHL sweaters. The pro career is a clincher, and inarguable validation. But Whitney was a wizard at the junior level, too – one of the heartbeats of Spokane’s 1991 Memorial Cup champions and the WHL’s player of the year as the league scoring leader with 185 points.

That’s right, 185 points. Who does that anymore?

Nobody, of course.

“As much as I’d like to say it was because of how good I was,” Whitney demurred, “you’ve got to remember how the game has changed. It’s much more defensive, coaches are better, there’s video to study and ways to prepare that translate to less scoring.

“But that’s the way it was then, and it was awesome. And we had a great team – I think we scored over 400 goals that year.”

And two years later, he was on the ice against Gretzky, Mark Messier, Esa Tikkanen – players he’d fetched sticks and Gatorade for as a teenager.

Ray Whitney, right, helped the Chiefs win the Memorial Cup in 1991. (FILE / S-R)
Ray Whitney, right, helped the Chiefs win the Memorial Cup in 1991. (FILE / S-R)

There would be eight stops before it ended, not counting a couple in the minors. One of those was a demotion of mercy his first full year in San Jose – the Sharks shipping him down after an 18-game losing streak with the rationale “this is no place for a 20-year-old.”

The next time the Sharks made a move became Whitney’s career crossroads.

The club bought out his contract in 1997 and he didn’t get a sniff until Glen Sather signed him, possibly for old times’ sake, in Edmonton the day the ’98 season started. That lasted a month before the Oilers opted for youth and Whitney suspected he was “one stop from being out of the league.

“I was going to go to Europe if I cleared (waivers) a second time,” he said. “But I got a break – Florida had some injuries and had a coach (Bryan Murray) who decided to use me on the point of the power play. I had points my first seven games there and wound up 10th in the league in goals.”

It was another payroll dump that proved to be the biggest break, Detroit’s post-lockout fire sale that saw Whitney land with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2005. By June, he was a Stanley Cup champion.

“We were ranked 29th of 30 teams in Hockey News,” he recalled, “but a month into we knew we had a special team with how the game was evolving and the clamping down on the clutch-and-grab. It just took other teams longer to adjust.

“Above all, you realize how hard it is to win. As a stickboy, I’d been around it a couple times in Edmonton and I ran around then like I’d won. But this was an overwhelming feeling.”

The rules changes surely added five years to Whitney’s career (”guys couldn’t reach out and pull you back into the corner anymore”). So how did he know it was over at age 42?

“I didn’t,” he cracked. “The league knew. Nobody called.”

That’s not altogether true. But now he feeds his hockey Jones as a Phoenix-based pro scout for the Hurricanes, though he confessed that, “I feel I could play even today – but that’s an arrogance every athlete has. He’s always the last to know it’s over.”

In Spokane, we were among the first to see it just starting.