Ice

Jerry Buss was so strongly associated with the Lakers and their championships that it's easy to forget he was the Kings' second owner - and that they were more to him than a throw-in item when he bought the Lakers, the Forum, the Kings and a 13,000-acre ranch from Jack Kent Cooke in 1979. Buss was more of a basketball fan than a hockey fan, but he put a lot of time and money into stabilizing and promoting the Kings. Soon after he took over, he signed high-scoring forward Marcel Dionne to a six-year contract worth a then-astonishing $600,000 a year, a pattern he followed with his NBA team.

You know you're famous when your haircut becomes the haircut. Dorothy Hamill wasn't prepared for fame. She just loved to skate. As a shy child, she fell in love with being outside on a pond, breathing fresh air and feeling like she was in her own world. Her mom took care of all the details that advanced Dorothy's career to the point where she captured Olympic figure skating gold in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1976. And she's still skating, appearing in the latest run of Stars on Ice, which is being presented today in Anaheim at the Honda Center.

Lake Michigan makes marbles. As pictures of beach-ball-sized ice boulders went viral this week, the visitor center at Michigan's Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore got swamped. "They've gotten a lot of phone calls," the park's chief of interpretation and visitor services, Lisa Myers, told the Los Angeles Times. "It's really spectacular. " Although this year's "Lake Michigan marbles"  are much bigger than usual, Myers said they're not a new phenomenon. Ice chunks form along the shore, get churned back and forth by the waves and grow slowly in the just-below-freezing water, which also helps to smooth the boulders, she said.

Despite winning three straight games and five of their last six, the Kings aren't the NHL's hottest team. They're not even the hottest team in Southern California. The Ducks, who will face the Kings on Monday at Staples Center, have the league's longest active winning streak at six -- all come-from-behind victories -- and have won 10 of 11 to rank second in the NHL with 27 points. But to have both the Kings and Ducks playing well as they meet for the second time this season should make this encounter far more than just another game in February.

Readers' tips were the centerpiece of our Feb. 17 issue. But there were so many of them we weren't able to use all of them in one issue. We'll be printing many more in the coming weeks. If you have a tip you'd like to share, please send it to travel@latimes.com , along with your name and city of residence. Want to carry a sandwich or salad on board in your small collapsible cooler? Freeze oranges or lemons and use them as your "blue ice. " Also, carry empty reusable water bottles and fill with ice and water after clearing security.

Valentine's Day has come and gone - and good riddance. You spent Thursday night blasting "Nothing Compares 2 U" by Sinead O'Connor while swigging from a bottle of Canadian Mist and looking at Facebook pictures of your ex and his new squeeze. Romantic love may feel more like a curse than a blessing, but cheer up. Being alone may not always feel great but it can still be something to celebrate, even savor. Ice Skating! Nothing says "I don't need you" like awkwardly gliding over ice for a good cause.

It might have been a chance meeting or a cunning act of propaganda, but the encounter more than 40 years ago between two pingpong champions - one Chinese, the other American - launched what President Nixon would call "the week that changed the world. " Zhuang Zedong, the captain of the Chinese team competing at the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Japan, was at the back of his team's bus when its doors swung open for a straggler, American juniors champion Glenn Cowan. With the United States and China still stuck in the Cold War, none of the Chinese players dared utter a word to the American.

SCITUATE, Mass. - For much of the Northeast, Sunday was a day to shovel out, thaw out and prepare for the workweek. But Anne Coppola's family and dozens of others had just begun to feel the effects of one of the worst storms to pummel New England in decades. Coppola and her husband, daughter, two cats and dog were among hundreds of people huddled in a high school in Scituate, about 30 miles southeast of Boston. The whole town had lost power and was unlikely to get it back for days.

NASHVILLE — Change was afoot — or more accurately — on the ice Saturday shortly before the Kings finally left what turned into their home most of the week, Nashville. Defenseman Keaton Ellerby, acquired from Florida for a fifth-round pick Friday, practiced with the Kings and was paired with Drew Doughty. Line combinations were shuffled for more balance, at least for the moment, and Jeff Carter was moved back to center. Then there were the necessary props given to Anze Kopitar's native Slovenia.

The great thing about visiting Moscow from Los Angeles is you don't have to reset your watch. It's a 12-hour time difference, so all you have to do is think about the time in a different way. Of course, winter in Russia is a little bit different from winter in Southern California. As the sun sets on Moscow, it's 7 degrees below zero and your guide is giving thanks for the mild weather. "It was 20 below zero last night," one local told me when I arrived Tuesday. "Be careful of icicles," said another.