Hockey is a lot like the weather in Spokane. If you don't like it, stick around a few hours and it'll change.
Twenty-four hours after the Tri-City Americans crushed the Spokane Chiefs, the Chiefs took their revenge Saturday night in the Arena with a 9-3 victory over the Americans.
It wasn't art. It wasn't even terrific sport. It was a drawn-out, wrenching, penalty-marred 3 hours and 5 minutes, but it capped the most tumultuous week in Chiefs history.
Packed into seven days were the crash of the team bus, the distractions of Wednesday night's all-star game here, the trade of the team's 20-year-old goaltender, the arrival of three new players and Friday night's 10-4 humbling loss in Kennewick.
"We've never had a week like that since I've been here," said Tim Speltz, in his seventh season as Chiefs general manager.
After all that happened it was if the Chiefs were sworn to win, if only to put some positive spin on all they had to put behind them.
Nobody embodied the turnaround more than goaltender Aren Miller, who swept aside 22 of 25 shots one night after getting torched with five third-period goals the night before in Kennewick.
"I knew I was terrible last night - everyone knew," Miller said. "But maybe it was good to get the bad game and the bad goals out of the way right away and move on."
Miller in recent weeks had been in a backup role to Marc Magliarditi. But at the Western Hockey League trade deadline on Friday the Chiefs sent Magliarditi to the Red Deer Rebels, convinced that their future lies with Miller.
"I gave him (Miller) the player-of-the-game puck for us, because he did bounce back," Chiefs coach Mike Babcock said. "I hated to see that last goal (Brent Ascroft's second of the game for the Americans, with 1:04 to go) because at that point he was playing back in his net, not challenging, and he hadn't done that all night.
