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LOS ANGELES – Kings coach John Stevens painted an impressive picture of the Nashville Predators.

“I think their defense is arguably as good as any defense in the league,” Stevens said at the morning skate ahead of Saturday night’s game against the visiting Predators. “And not just six – they have eight guys deep. They’ve got a goalie (Pekka Rinne) who handles the puck really well and I think they’re really, really solid down the middle now. They’re a good team. I think they’re as good a team as there is in the West.”

Unfortunately for the Kings, their coach was right as the Predators rode two goals by Austin Watson to a 4-3 victory over the Kings before a sellout crowd of 18,230 at Staples Center.

Nashville (24-11-6, 54 points) came in having lost two in a row and three of its past four. The Kings (24-13-5, 53 points) have lost two consecutive games.

Nashville took a 1-0 lead when Roman Josi beat Jonathan Quick from about 10 feet inside the blue line at 15:08 of the first period. It was a power-play goal, and it came after the Kings had killed all but 19 seconds of a four-minute penalty to Drew Doughty.

Doughty was called for interference at the 11:27 mark. Before the power-play began, Doughty was whistled for unsportsmanlike conduct, adding two more minutes.

Fifteen seconds in, Dustin Brown drew a tripping penalty, meaning the Predators would have a two-man advantage for 1:45. The Kings and their league-best penalty-kill unit killed Brown’s penalty and almost all of the two Doughty incurred, but Josi foiled all that with his eighth of the season. Assists went to Kyle Turris and P.K. Subban.

Nashville out-shot the Kings 9-7 in the first 20 minutes.

The Kings tied the scored 1-1 when Adrian Kempe scored his 13th of the season at 6:43 of the second. The goal was unassisted as Kempe stole the puck from Subban in the Nashville end and shot one past Rinne.

But some five minutes later, at 11:53, Scott Hartnell scored his sixth when he got one past an out-of-position Quick from point-blank range for a 2-1 Predators lead. Hartnell was left unmarked. Ryan Johansen and Alexei Emelin had the assists.
Not satisfied, Nashville increased its lead to 3-1 when Watson scored his fourth from about 15 feet at the 16:49 mark. Assists went to Subban and Miikka Salomaki.

Quick went down early in the period when a dislodged net hit him in the back. Quick went down and seemed to be favoring his left knee, but he stayed in the game.

The Kings had 18 shots on goal through two periods, the Predators 15.
The Kings pulled within 3-2 when Trevor Lewis scores his 10th of the season at 3:56 of the third, assists going to Alex Iafallo and Nick Shore.

That joy was short-lived when Watson scored his second of the game and fifth of the season at 5:05 for a 4-2 Predators advantage. Ryan Ellis and Calle Jarnkrok had the assists.

The Kings hung tough and when Tyler Toffoli scored his 18th on a power play at 8:24 of the period, they were within 4-3. Tanner Pearson and Anze Kopitar assisted.

NOTES: The Kings on Saturday announced they activated defenseman Christian Folin off of the injured reserve list and put defenseman Jake Muzzin on the IR. Folin went on the IR on Dec. 21 with an upper-body injury. Muzzin also has an upper-body injury, with his placement on the IR retroactive to Jan. 4. … The Kings will now take their mandated bye and won’t play again until next Saturday, when they host the Ducks.

PARAMOUNT — A man driving a green Honda recklessly on freeways and surface streets in Orange and Los Angeles counties Saturday night was stopped by a CHP Pursuit Intervention Technique maneuver in Paramount after about a 35-minute pursuit.

Garden Grove police officers began the pursuit when the man was observed on the Garden Grove (22) Freeway, according to broadcast reports.

The pursuit went through Garden Grove, Seal Beach and part of Long Beach with the car moving the wrong way on freeways and surface streets as the car sped northbound on the San Gabriel River (605) Freeway and the Riverside (91) Freeway, getting off on Bellflower Blvd. and onto the Glen Anderson (105) Freeway, as observed from KNBC4’s helicopter.

The driver got off at Paramount Boulevard and went southbound in northbound lanes until turning east on Alondra Boulevard, where the CHP used the PIT maneuver to spin and disable the vehicle.

The man and a female passenger were taken into custody.

Graeme Gaughan, Tourne de Transmission’s creative director, returned to foreign cultures for fall 2018, the inspiration material that fueled his rise on the men’s wear scene. “I got a bit distracted in the last few seasons,” he told WWD, explaining that this season it was images in photographer Lee Gordon’s book, “Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti,” that galvanized his return to form.
Gordon’s images of the carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, in the Nineties depict men smeared in paint or mud wearing dresses, and children in ill-fitting suits gathered to reenact a grisly story from their history.
Gaughan reinterpreted Gordon’s otherworldly characters through a refined collection predominantly in black . Tailored coats skewed longer on one side, with asymmetrically applied pockets, while lace T-shirts were a subtle reminder of the spectacle and gender fluidity of the collection’s inspiration.
A baby pink check lifted the mood and looked especially good for a hooded parka with a dipped hem that was paired with a zip-front sweat and raw denim jeans.

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Ben Sherman teamed with Henry Holland on a capsule range of separates for men and women which paid homage to the Northern Soul culture and the night owls that populated it.
The brand’s creative director Mark Williams worked with Holland, who is known for his whimsical prints and playful details. Holland added his own twist and gave an an upbeat touch to the label’s classic knitted polos, button-down shirts, T-shirts, jackets, denim, knitwear, trousers and coats.
“Mark had already started working on a collection inspired by Brian Cannon’s photography,” Holland explained. “There are some amazing casual images of Northern Soul nights where people go and dance all night long. And obviously there is the connection with the North of England and myself.”
Holland brought a sportier aesthetic to the brand in the form of technical tracksuits which featured all-over geometric prints and bold patterns. Holland also played with the brand’s logo, which ran down the legs of tracksuit joggers. This was done in bright primary colors for both men and women.

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Tinie Tempah took a new direction for his label’s third outing, fusing the brand’s signature sporty aesthetic with more utilitarian elements, inspired by working uniforms.
“I was looking at the real world. What We Wear is trying to reflect the modern, stylish Millennial man and the main thing that he does after the age of 18 is work. Every job, whether you are working underground or in the sky, requires a certain uniform,” said the musician and designer.
He explored the concept of uniform as armor, delivering a collection filled with wearable pieces with lots of urban attitude.
There were matching trouser and jacket combinations, in a neutral palette of navy, black, gray and khaki. The trousers were slim-fitted and done in a structured coated cotton, while jackets and shirting in the same fabric featured large cargo pockets and more oversized silhouettes.
Tailoring was also introduced in the form of a loose, boiled wool suit, while less formal elements included nylon tracksuits paired with matching puffer jackets.
Tempah stressed that he wants the brand to maintain a minimalistic aesthetic and focus the attention on the clothes, without any direct references to himself or his name. “My ambition is to see the clothes on every young

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The new bicycle is built to handle rugged trails and equipped with some serious hardware.

Mater Dei All-County wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown committed Saturday to USC during an announcement at the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio.

“Fight on, baby,” St. Brown said during his announcement.

https://t.co/hCmENUj0nj

— Dan Albano (@ocvarsityguy) January 6, 2018

St. Brown had narrowed his college decision to USC, Stanford and Notre Dame.

In picking the Trojans, he charted his own college course. His brother, Equanimeous, played wide receiver at Notre Dame and recently declared for the NFL draft. His brother, Osiris, plays wide out at Stanford.

St. Brown followed his Mater Dei quarterback JT Daniels, a USC commit who reclassified to join the class of 2018.

St. Brown and Daniels are arguably the best quarterback-wide receiver duo in O.C. prep football history. Daniels is the county’s all-time leader in passing yards and touchdown passes while St. Brown owns he county mark for TD receptions.

And just for good measure, Daniels tossed a 17-yard touchdown pass to St. Brown during the all-star game Saturday. St. Brown finished with four receptions for 93 yards and one touchdown. Daniels completed 7 of 13 passes for 115 yards with a touchdown. He was intercepted once.

Almost every new mother faces the baby-budget challenge: All that stuff, does it all need to be new? Here’s a look at where you can save and where spending more is worth it:

Buy new
Car seats: A car seat is an essential requirement; each state requires infants and children to ride in one when in a car. And although new car seats are expensive, it’s worth your peace of mind to buy one new. First, car seats have an expiration date (typically six to nine years after their manufacture date). Second, if they’ve been in a car accident, they are not safe to reuse.

Cribs: Rules on cribs (as with much baby furniture) are constantly in flux, but on June 28, 2011, the government ruled that drop-side cribs are dangerous and should not be sold in the United States. Crib bumper pads also are problematic; the American Academy of Pediatrics says bumper pads can put a baby at risk for suffocation and other injuries. If you can’t afford a new crib, buy a new portable crib, which is less expensive and safer than a used crib. You should also stay away from used crib mattresses, which have been through enough wear and tear, and possibly exposed to mold and bacteria. Buy a new mattress and don’t risk your baby’s health.

Infant formula: Many mom boards and secondhand sites sell infant formula, which, new, costs about $20 a pack. Aside from the obvious risk (you could be buying tainted formula!), even if the person you’re buying the formula from is trustworthy, there’s no way to know whether the formula has been stored correctly. If formula isn’t stored in a cool, dry area (from 55 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit), it could degrade and lose nutrients.

Buy used
Strollers, if made after 2007: Ten years ago, the safety standards for strollers were amended to fix impact, stability, and shoulder-strap safety issues. If you’re buying a stroller used, watch out for broken, loose or missing parts. Put your child in it and take them around the block to make sure the ride is smooth and sturdy. Lastly, check the make and model for a manual you can access online, and make sure there have been no recall issues.

Formal baby clothes: If you’re heading to a wedding or celebrating Easter or Christmas (and taking photos!), look for used clothing. Formal jackets and dresses are generally used once or twice. Kids grow out of them so fast that they often don’t suffer wear and tear. When dealing with designer outfits as used commodities, you don’t have to spend a ton to make your kid look like North West or Blue Ivy. (Same goes for nonformal wear and baby shoes!)

Rocking chairs and changing tables: As gently used baby furniture goes, changing tables or rocking chairs are pretty standard. If they don’t have peeling paint, missing or chipped parts, you should be OK buying used. After all, changing tables have about a nine-month lifespan; after that, your baby will be moving around so much that you’ll probably decide to change him or her wherever you can. Do, however, buy a new changing pad or cover.

Baby tub: Some baby tubs are incredibly cheap; even so, buy them used at garage sales. Clean it inside and out with bleach and then rinse it in hot water, and it will be good as new. After all, all they are for is storing soapy water. Many parents eventually end up bathing babies in the sink, or bringing their kids in the tub with them. How dirty can babies get, anyway?

Baby gear such as bouncers and rockers: As long as they have not been recalled and aren’t broken (look up the specific product name before you buy) these baby distractors are great. These jumpers/rockers are lifesavers when you need to set a baby down and relax, or go to the bathroom or cook dinner. But because your baby will need it for only four to five months (maybe six, if you’re lucky!), buy them used. These items are such obnoxious monstrosities that once parents realize they’re not needed anymore, they try to get rid of them ASAP, and rarely look used.

Lil Lovinus is a writer, editor and mom of two kids and a kitty.

After spending half the season as UCLA’s top tight end, redshirt junior Austin Roberts declared for the NFL draft on Saturday, becoming the fourth draft-eligible junior from UCLA to announce he is leaving school early.

“From waking up at 5 a.m. to run and lift with my teammates to staying up til 4 studying for an exam to making players under the Rose Bowl lights, my time at UCLA has been a blessing,” Roberts wrote on social media. “Along with graduating, I’m blessed to say that I am taking the next step and putting my name in the NFL Draft!”

Had a few typos on the first draft😅 but thank you UCLA!🐻🐻 pic.twitter.com/o9MwVs5FUe

— Austin Roberts (@youseela88) January 6, 2018

Roberts, who was on the preseason John Mackey Award watch list for the nation’s top tight end, took over as the team’s No. 1 tight end option after redshirt sophomore Caleb Wilson suffered a Lisfranc injury in the fifth game of the year. The redshirt junior from Hollywood, Fla., had 19 catches with 220 receiving yards and two touchdowns in 10 games.

Roberts appeared in only 24 career games for the Bruins after redshirting his true freshman year.

With Wilson expected to return from the injury that halted his promising season and transfer Devin Asiasi now eligible after sitting out last year, UCLA still has a deep group of tight ends. Redshirt sophomore Jordan Wilson had 16 catches for 155 yards and two touchdowns, while the Bruins also have freshmen Moses Robinson-Carr, who played mostly special teams, and Jimmy Jaggers, who redshirted.

Roberts’ father Alfredo was a longtime NFL tight ends coach before taking over running backs for the Chargers this season.

Quarterback Josh Rosen, receiver Jordan Lasley and offensive tackle Kolton Miller have also declared for the draft with the Jan. 15 deadline still one week away.

Murray chooses UCLA

Mater Dei offensive lineman Chris Murray committed to UCLA during the U.S. Army All-American Bowl on Saturday, giving the Bruins a much-needed recruiting boost.

The four-star recruit chose the Bruins over Stanford and Notre Dame, saying on the live NBC broadcast that he thought his athleticism would lend itself perfectly to head coach Chip Kelly’s system.

Murray is UCLA’s 11th known verbal commit for the class of 2018 and second offensive lineman, joining Etiwanda’s Alec Anderson. Eight players have already signed national letters of intent.

UCLA recently lost a coveted pledge from cornerback Olaijah Griffin and before Murray’s announcement, the Bruins had the seventh-best recruiting class in the Pac-12, according to 247 Sports’ Composite Rankings. Murray’s commitment bumped UCLA up to fourth in the Pac-12.

Brendan Radley-Hiles, one of the top cornerbacks in the country, had UCLA in his final four, but instead chose Oklahoma during Saturday’s all-star game.

By Marcia Dunn
The Associated Press

Legendary astronaut John Young, who walked on the moon and later commanded the first space shuttle flight, has died, NASA said Saturday. Young was 87.

The space agency said Young died Friday night at home in Houston following complications from pneumonia.

NASA called Young one of its pioneers — the only agency astronaut to go into space as part of the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs, and the first to fly into space six times. He was the ninth man to walk on the moon.

“Astronaut John Young’s storied career spanned three generations of spaceflight,” NASA administrator Robert Lightfoot said in an emailed statement. “John was one of that group of early space pioneers whose bravery and commitment sparked our nation’s first great achievements in space.”

Young was the only spaceman to span NASA’s Gemini, Apollo and shuttle programs, and became the first person to rocket away from Earth six times. Counting his takeoff from the moon in 1972 as commander of Apollo 16, his blastoff tally stood at seven, for decades a world record.

He flew twice during the two-man Gemini missions of the mid-1960s, twice to the moon during NASA’s Apollo program, and twice more aboard the new space shuttle Columbia in the early 1980s.

His NASA career lasted 42 years, longer than any other astronaut’s, and he was revered among his peers for his dogged dedication to keeping crews safe — and his outspokenness in challenging the space agency’s status quo.

Chastened by the 1967 Apollo launch pad fire that killed three astronauts, Young spoke up after the 1986 shuttle Challenger launch accident. His hard scrutiny continued well past shuttle Columbia’s disintegration during re-entry in 2003.

“Whenever and wherever I found a potential safety issue, I always did my utmost to make some noise about it, by memo or whatever means might best bring attention to it,” Young wrote in his 2012 memoir, “Forever Young.”

He said he wrote a “mountain of memos” between the two shuttle accidents to “hit people over the head.” Such practice bordered on heresy at NASA.

Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who orbited the moon in 1969 as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked its surface, considered Young “the memo-writing champion of the astronaut office.” Young kept working at Johnson Space Center in Houston “long after his compatriots had been put out to pasture or discovered other green fields,” Collins wrote in the foreword of “Forever Young.”

Indeed, Young remained an active astronaut into his early 70s, long after all his peers had left, and held on to his role as NASA’s conscience until his retirement in 2004.

“You don’t want to be politically correct,” he said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press. “You want to be right.”

Young was in NASA’s second astronaut class, chosen in 1962, along with the likes of Neil Armstrong, Pete Conrad and James Lovell.

Young was the first of his group to fly in space: He and Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom made the first manned Gemini mission in 1965. Unknown to NASA, Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich on board, given to him by Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra. When it came time to test NASA’s official space food, Young handed Grissom the sandwich as a joke.

The ensuing scandal over that corned beef on rye — two silly minutes of an otherwise triumphant five-hour flight — always amazed Young. Sandwiches already had flown in space, Young said in his book, but NASA brass and Congress considered this one a multimillion-dollar embarrassment and outlawed corned beef sandwiches in space forever after.

Two years later, with Gemini over and Apollo looming, Young asked Grissom why he didn’t say something about the bad wiring in the new Apollo 1 spacecraft. Grissom feared doing so would get him fired, Young said. A few weeks later, on Jan. 27, 1967, those wires contributed to the fire that killed Grissom, Edward White II and Roger Chaffee in a countdown practice on their Cape Canaveral launch pad.

It was the safety measures put in place after the fire that got 12 men, Young included, safely to the surface of the moon and back.

“I can assure you if we had not had that fire and rebuilt the command module … we could not have done the Apollo program successfully,” Young said in 2007. “So we owe a lot to Gus, and Rog and Ed. They made it possible for the rest of us to do the almost impossible.”

Young orbited the moon on Apollo 10 in May 1969 in preparation for the Apollo 11 moon landing that was to follow in a couple months. He commanded Apollo 16 three years later, the next-to-last manned lunar voyage, and walked on the moon.

He hung on for the space shuttle, commanding Columbia’s successful maiden voyage in 1981 with co-pilot Robert Crippen by his side. It was a risky endeavor: Never before had NASA launched people on a rocket ship that had not first been tested in space. Young pumped his fists in jubilation after emerging from Columbia on the California runway, following the two-day flight.

Young made his final trek into orbit aboard Columbia two years later, again as its skipper.

Young’s reputation continued to grow, even after he stopped launching. He spoke out on safety measures, even before the Challenger debacle.

“By whatever management methods it takes, we must make Flight Safety first. If we do not consider Flight Safety first all the time at all levels of NASA, this machinery and this program will NOT make it,” he warned colleagues.

As then chief of the astronaut corps, Young was flying a shuttle training aircraft high above Kennedy Space Center when Challenger ruptured. He took pictures of the nose-diving crew cabin. The seven Challenger astronauts never knew of all the dangerous O-ring seal trouble leading up to their flight. “If I had known these things, I would have made them aware, that’s for damn sure,” Young wrote in his book.

Young noted that even his friends at NASA considered him “doom and gloom,” and that a shuttle launch “always scared me more than it thrilled me.”

He always thought the probability was there for a space shuttle accident, he observed in his autobiography, given that it was “such an incredibly complex machine.”

“It wasn’t pessimism. It was just being realistic,” he wrote.

Yet Young maintained that NASA and the nation should accept an occasional spaceflight failure, saying it’s worth the risk.

“I really believe we should be operating (the shuttle), flying it right now, because there’s just not a lot we can do to make it any better,” Young said in 2004, a year after the Columbia tragedy. Another year passed before shuttle flights resumed.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Young maintained the United States should be doing two to three times the amount of space exploration that it was doing. NASA should be developing massive rockets to lift payloads to the moon to industrialize it, he said, and building space systems for detecting and deflecting comets or asteroids that could threaten Earth.

“The country needs it. The world needs it. Civilization needs it,” Young said in 2000, adding with a chuckle, “I don’t need it. I’m not going to be here that long.”

In his book, Young noted that his “relentless” stream of memos about volcanic super-eruptions and killer asteroids was aimed at scaring and educating at the same time. Humans need to start living off the planet in order to save the species, he stressed again and again, pointing to the moon. “Some folks surely regarded me as a crackpot,” he wrote. “But that didn’t stop me.”

Young spent his last 17 years at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in management, focusing on safety issues. He retired at the end of 2004, seven months shy of NASA’s return to space following the Columbia accident.

Young was born Sept. 24, 1930 and grew up in Orlando, Fla. He became interested early on in aviation, making model planes. He spent his last high school summer working on a surveying team. The job took him to Titusville due east of Orlando; he never imagined that one day he would be sitting on rockets across the Indian River, blasting off for the moon.

He earned an aeronautical engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1952 and went on to join the Navy and serve in Korea as a gunnery officer. He eventually became a Navy fighter pilot and test pilot.

Young received more than 100 major accolades in his lifetime, including the prestigious Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1981.

Even after leaving NASA, he worked to keep the space flame alive, noting in his official NASA biography that he was continuing to advocate the development of technologies “that will allow us to live and work on the moon and Mars.”

“Those technologies over the long (or short) haul will save civilization on Earth,” he warned in his NASA bio, almost as a parting shot.

Dunn reported from Cape Canaveral, Fla.