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Apartment fire is fatal to cats in Orange

ORANGE — Three cats were killed Monday night in an apartment fire in Orange, but no other injuries were reported.

The fire broke out at 10:19 p.m. at the Terrace Apartment at 200 City Blvd. West, according to the Orange Fire Department.

Thirty-four firefighters got the fire under control in a little less than 30 minutes, according to a dispatcher.

The cause of the fire was under investigation and there was no immediate word of displacements.

27.02.2018No comments
Whicker: Kings finally have a night to remember against Knights

LOS ANGELES — What it takes to beat the Vegas Golden Knights:

• A power-play goal that bounces from goalie Marc-Andre Fleury to the helmet of Cody Eakin, back past Fleury.

• A blast by Anze Kopitar with 10.8 seconds left that defies shutter speeds.

• A backhand-to-forehand creation by Dustin Brown, fashioned from his knees at the entrance to Fleury’s net that got over the pads and provided instant victory out of oatmeal.

The 3-2 win put the Kings back over the playoff line and sets up another close encounter Tuesday night in Las Vegas.

Brown did his thing and then skated off, cracking up a Kings’ employee by telling him, “I can’t believe I was the No. 1 star.”

Belief came hard all night.

For more than two and a half periods, the Knights were busily underscoring their perch on top of the Western Conference. They were 41-16-4 at the time. Weren’t they supposed to quit playing like this by now? Actually they might be getting better.

Jonathan Quick was pushed to his utmost powers of denial. Twice he had to skate nearly to the blue line to stop a potential Vegas breakaway. Again and again he slid and stopped wide-open shots, haunting Alex Tuch in particular.

Only a bullet by Eric Haula got past him until the beginning of the third period, when Reilly Smith broke down Derek Forbort, went behind the net, came out to meet a rebound before Drew Doughty could stop him, and tapped a 2-0 lead past Quick.

“You have to get the puck past them in the offensive zone,” Brown said. “You have to get it behind their D. If you’re out there trying to make plays at the blue line, they break those up and they have three or four guys going the other way real quick. That’s how they catch you.”

But the Kings managed to defuse the Vegas power play and got an opening when Ryan Reaves was sent to the box. They converged on Fleury, and Jeff Carter, who hadn’t scored yet this season, took a bad-angle shot. Instead it turned into a mean pinball, ricocheting off Eakin’s head.

“It was a break but we were attacking the net,” Brown said. “We hadn’t gotten much time down low. Sometimes the puck got there and we weren’t there, sometimes we were there and the puck wasn’t there.”

With Quick pulled, the Kings threw everything into the breach. Two different scrambles in front of the net kept Fleury busy but produced no goals.

“I think Carts (Carter) and I probably had 35 shots each in the crease there,” Brown said.

Finally Kopitar fished the puck out of the goal-side scrum and flipped it out to Dion Phaneuf in the high slot. Then Kopitar disengaged and went to the right wing.

What happened next made you think of the great double-play combos in baseball. Phaneuf’s pass went right to Kopitar’s clubface, and it was past Fleury before the image got to his retina. Tie game, and a sullen Staples Center crowd sounded off.

In overtime, Brown camped out and waited for Tyler Toffoli’s shot, then converted his 19th goal out of pure slickness.

“I thought we played a solid game,” Brown said, “but we couldn’t get bodies in front of the net. When we did we found goals.”

“If you think you’re going to score on the rush against them, you’re not going to do that,” Coach John Stevens said. “They’re going the other way in a hurry. We did a better job working back, generating speed. You can’t get stretched out against them, and they like to squeeze you from in front and back, and their D does a good job of holding gaps. You have to want to forecheck, you have to have the passion to forecheck against them.”

That is how the Ducks shut out Vegas last week. In the three games before that, the Knights scored 16 times. In the two games since that loss, they scored 13 times. So it takes something exceptional, like Quick was Monday.

Stevens had called this a “two-game playoff” Monday morning, and both he and Knights coach Gerard Gallant treated it accordingly. The Kings shuffled their lines all night. Stevens said Nate Thompson played all three forward positions during the game. Having Carter back, and the options therein, was big.

Plus, James Neal left the game in the second period and Vegas had to start shuffling, too. But the Knights’ lines are so even that matchups become tricky.

“I loved the way we played,” Gallant said. “They get a break on the first goal and they scored late. I liked everything we did tonight. A loss like that is going to happen, but we got one point and they got two.”

The win gives the Kings 73 points and lets them overtake Calgary for a wild-card spot. That, like everything else in hockey and life, is day-to-day. But with their roster settled for a six-week drag race, the Kings finally learned what it takes to beat Vegas. Actually they knew what it took, but now Vegas knows the Kings have it.

27.02.2018No comments