Hockey and Kings Deserve to Be Treated With a Little Respect

From reading The Times sports section for the past few months, I get the impression that someone in high places must hate hockey because the sport does not receive the respect it deserves in your section.

Why? Hockey is a great game, and we have a soon-to-be great team here in Los Angeles. Hockey is just as exciting as Laker basketball and certainly more exciting than those two old carcasses: Football and baseball. It is a game of skill, quick thinking and rapid action--shooting a small puck past a dexterous goalie at 50 m.p.h. is no everyday feat. The Times, however, chooses not to treat hockey like the major league sport it is.

The Times finds room on Page 1 for Tommy Lasorda talking trash, but when Luc Robitaille and Jimmy Carson both score 50 goals in one season--imagine!--it’s on Page 4 or 5 or 6.

More recently, you used the Jim Schoenfeld incident as a platform to denigrate hockey. It was an unbecoming story, but not half as unbecoming as the various strikes and scandals in baseball and football. What’s your perspective? Take a closer look at hockey and the Kings; you’ll see that neither is as bad as you think they are.

JENNIE BROWN

Venice