Sharks

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No one had to tell the Kings they were struggling on the power play. With only two goals through the early part of the playoffs, production had slipped from the regular season and the team was searching for answers. Mike Richards figured that he and his teammates got too fancy, trying to pass too much. Rookie Tyler Toffoli said: "We just weren't getting a lot of luck. " All of that changed Thursday night when special teams came to the rescue, accounting for three goals - including two in the last 1:43 - for the Kings' improbable 4-3 win over the San Jose Sharks.

In what could be the ultimate marine smack-down, great white sharks off the California coast may be migrating 1,600 miles west to do battle with creatures that rival their star power: giant squids. A series of studies tracking this mysterious migration has scientists rethinking not just about what the big shark does with its time but also about what sort of creature it is. Few sea denizens match great white sharks and giant squids in primitive mystique. Both are the subject of popular mania; both are inscrutable.

The Kings recently had a day off, a brief respite from the otherwise hectic postseason, with coaches holding an abbreviated morning skate for a dozen or so players. Drew Doughty chose to skip practice, hanging around the locker room, playing ping-pong with teammate Slava Voynov. "It's good to have a break," he said. "Make sure to get some rest. " The defenseman has earned it. During the regular season, Doughty ranked among the NHL's hardest-working players, averaging more than 26 minutes on the ice, fourth-most in the league.

The search continued Tuesday for the missing companion of a young woman killed in a shark attack last week, while news of the UCLA graduate student's violent death stunned classmates and faculty members on the Westwood campus. Members of Roy Jeffrey Stoddard's family were arriving at his Malibu home, still hopeful that he would be found alive, even though it has been more than five days since he set out from Malibu on a short morning kayaking excursion with his girlfriend, Tamara McAllister.

Re "Shark contest stirs a frenzy," Column One, Aug. 17 Of all the injustices men commit against nature, the one that most upsets me is the vast assault against all the world's sharks. At least 100 million of these magnificent animals are massacred by humans every year. No one knows exactly how many die because the majority are finned and thrown back into the water to die. I believe humans will cause the extinction of most shark species. About 40 years ago, when I traveled between Los Angeles and Catalina Island, I would see 30 to 40 sharks in an hour and a half.

This will be the first time in 17 playoff series the Kings will have home-ice advantage. They last had home ice at the Forum, in a first-round series against Edmonton in 1992. The fifth-seeded Kings and sixth-seeded Sharks each won two games in their season series, but the Kings got five points because one of their losses was in a shootout. Brent Burns led both teams with eight points, on two goals and six assists. Justin Williams led the Kings with six points, on two goals and four assists.

  Imagine swimming inches away from sharks and other marine live … right in downtown Las Vegas. Yep, that's now reality at the Tank, the $30-millon pool at the Golden Nugget. Five species of sharks and various game fish fill a 200,000-gallon shark aquarium, which is the centerpiece of a three-story pool complex, complete with waterfalls and a killer water slide that speeds you right through the middle of the aquarium. Shark species include sand tiger sharks, brown sharks, Pacific blacktip sharks, nurse sharks and a zebra shark.

Regarding "Shark Safari" (Weekend Escape, June 7), which described an adventure in which people could get into an "open top" shark cage that would then be partially submerged in the water to view blue sharks, up close: This idea of exposing the public to sharks "in their natural habitat" is a fraud and a potentially dangerous one at that. In the first place, they toss chum into the water to attract the sharks and work them into an unnatural feeding frenzy. Would we go to Yosemite, roll down our car window and feed the bears?

Brent Burns practically set up base camp next to Jonathan Quick in the third period, the San Jose forward getting clean looks and helping generate chance after chance against Quick. The Kings' goalie had to be at his very best under a prolonged third-period siege by Burns and his teammates, reaching back and pulling off a virtuoso performance from his 2012 playoff playbook. That playbook, as you might remember, is titled, "Most valuable player of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Trevor Lewis, the mellowest of the low-key Kings, is hardly given to outsized statements or outlandish proclamations. You can understand why he was out of sorts after his game-winning goal in the Kings' 4-3 victory over the San Jose Sharks, a blow that completed a dizzying comeback. The Kings scored two late power-play goals within 22 seconds to steal Game 2 on Thursday night at Staples Center and take a 2-0 series lead. "I think I almost passed out in the celebration," Lewis said.

The 18,000-plus fans who crammed into Staples Center didn't want to leave, lingering to digest what they had seen and savor an improbable moment. Who could blame them for trying to prolong a moment so stunning that it was at least the equal of the many feats the Kings pulled off last spring in winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in 45 years? The Kings won a game they seemed bound to lose Thursday, rallying for two goals in the last two minutes for a 4-3 victory over the San Jose Sharks to take a solid 2-0 series lead.

San Jose Sharks forward Raffi Torres was suspended for the remainder of his team's Western Conference semifinal playoff series against the Kings - a ban of up to six games - for what the NHL judged was an illegal hit to the head of Kings center Jarret Stoll on Tuesday. The decision was announced Thursday by Brendan Shanahan, the league's director of player safety, after a hearing in New York that was attended by Torres. Stoll, one of the Kings' primary penalty-killing forwards and a valued third-line center, probably sustained a concussion from the hit, which occurred near the end of the second period of the Kings' 2-0 victory in the series opener.

San Jose winger Raffi Torres' jarring hit of Kings center Jarret Stoll on Tuesday triggered a sizable ripple effect that could alter the tone and course of the teams' Western Conference semifinal playoff series. The ripples could spread far enough for the Kings to lose a valued penalty killer for a while and for the NHL to severely punish Torres, a multiple repeat offender under the league's often murky code of justice. Torres was suspended Wednesday pending an in-person hearing scheduled Thursday in New York with the NHL's Department of Player Safety.

Brent Burns practically set up base camp next to Jonathan Quick in the third period, the San Jose forward getting clean looks and helping generate chance after chance against Quick. The Kings' goalie had to be at his very best under a prolonged third-period siege by Burns and his teammates, reaching back and pulling off a virtuoso performance from his 2012 playoff playbook. That playbook, as you might remember, is titled, "Most valuable player of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Anze Kopitar was doing his best work with crutches, not a hockey stick, and teammate Justin Williams was courageously trying to do his best on the ice, nursing a separated shoulder. The big two? More like a battered two the last time the Kings met San Jose in the NHL playoffs, two long and winding years ago, a first-round series the Sharks won in six games. "It wasn't great," Kopitar said. That was the first thing Kopitar remembered — well, who is ever going to forget a fractured ankle?

San Jose defenseman Dan Boyle scored the lone goal in a shootout, and Evgeni Nabokov stopped all three Columbus shooters to give the Sharks their sixth straight win, a 3-2 victory over the Blue Jackets on Wednesday night. Nabokov made 26 saves in regulation and overtime, then stopped attempts by Nikita Filatov, Anton Stralman and Rick Nash in the tiebreaker. Joe Thornton scored and Dany Heatley had a power-play goal for San Jose. The Sharks have won eight of their last nine games.

When tracking down the tantalizing smell of prey, a shark relies mostly on which nostril first detects the scent rather than on the strength of the odor, a study has found. The findings, published online Thursday in the journal Current Biology, suggest that sharks with more widely spaced nares may be better able to judge the location of their prey. Scientists had long thought that the concentration of the smell determined how a shark would react. "People have always just kind of had this idea that it was concentration.

A shutout victory might look dominant on the scoreboard, but the Kings' players and coaches saw room for improvement after Tuesday night's 2-0 win over the San Jose Sharks. Mike Richards, who scored midway through the second period, did not like the way his team started out, with San Jose forcing most of the action in the first 10 minutes. "They had a lot of time to make plays," Richards said. "At the beginning of a series, it sometimes feels like you're trying to feel out people, but luckily it didn't cost us. " The Kings not only managed to score at the end of the first period, they also found a rhythm in the second and shut down a Sharks power play that has been very effective in this postseason.

This will be the first time in 17 playoff series the Kings will have home-ice advantage. They last had home ice at the Forum, in a first-round series against Edmonton in 1992. The fifth-seeded Kings and sixth-seeded Sharks each won two games in their season series, but the Kings got five points because one of their losses was in a shootout. Brent Burns led both teams with eight points, on two goals and six assists. Justin Williams led the Kings with six points, on two goals and four assists.