Pay attention to hockey

Sportswriters of America, you can relax. The game of ice hockey is over for the season. No more worry about red line, blue line or two-line pass, which is not a backyard game of tag. In hockey, we call it icing (not the stuff you put on cake) or offsides, which 99 percent of you probably think only happens in football.

How about a little more credit for the 20 guys on a team who play 88 of the roughest, toughest, heart-wrenching games on the planet every year? Not to mention the Spokane Chiefs’ own Ray Whitney, whose goal in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals could have been the game winner if it hadn’t been for the great comeback of the Edmonton Oilers.

Whitney single-handedly put the Chiefs in the playoffs in 1990 in the absence of Pat Falloon, and in 1991 the tandem of Falloon and Whitney won the Chiefs the most coveted trophy of all junior hockey.

It’s too bad the sports staff of the Review can’t put down the weed pipe long enough to remember one of the greatest hockey players to ever put on a skate in the Boone Street Barn.

Bob Divine

Spokane