- January 31st, 2019, 3:45 am
#983
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bad breaks and bounces piled up during the Los Angeles Kings‘ six-game skid] , and it looked as if another gaffe would extend that drought when goalie Jack Campbell accidentally deflected a centering pass into his own net with his skate midway though the second period.Instead, the Kings found the resolve they had been lacking to rally for their first win since Oct. 11.Alec Martinez scored with 55 seconds remaining, and the Kings beat the New York Rangers 4-3 on Sunday. Martinez brought the puck from behind his net into the offensive zone and fired a wrist shot through the legs of Brendan Smith and past goaltender Henrik Lundqvist for his first goal of the season.“Yeah, when the buzzer sounds, it was obviously a good feeling,” Martinez said. “We haven’t felt that in a while. That said, we enjoy it tonight and tomorrow it’s back to work.”Ilya Kovalchuk had a goal and two assists, Trevor Lewis scored and Drew Doughty had two assists for the Kings.Dustin Brown, making his season debut after breaking a finger in Los Angeles’ final preseason game, also scored.Vladislav Namestnikov and Tony DeAngelo each had a goal and an assist and Ryan Spooner also scored for the Rangers, who are winless in five road games. Lundqvist made 36 saves.Spooner tied the game at 3-all with 4:44 remaining after Lewis had put the Kings ahead about five minutes earlier, ending a 410-minute span during which the Kings failed to hold a lead.Los Angeles tied it on power-play goals from Brown and Kovalchuk just under three minutes apart in the second period after DeAngelo’s pass ended up in Campbell’s net to give the Rangers a 2-0 lead.“I don’t think anybody panicked. I gave up that bad one in the second and they just kept going Max Jones Jersey Womens ,” said Campbell, who made 22 saves in place of the injured Jonathan Quick.Quick is day-to-day because of a lower-body injury. Kings coach John Stevens said Quick did not feel right after participating in practice Saturday.“There wasn’t one particular acute moment that had it, but he had a great practice and I thought he was terrific. So we’re all a little surprised that he came up lame after that. In the course of practice something happened,” Stevens said.The Rangers have not won away from home this season, and the frustration was evident after another self-inflicted mistake for too many men on the ice resulted in Kovalchuk’s power-play goal.“You just have to stop beating yourself,” Rangers coach David Quinn said. “It’s hard enough in this league to beat teams when you’re not beating yourself. We helped them win tonight, and that’s got to stop. That’s on me, and we’re going to keep at it.”The Rangers have been outscored 23-13 on the road and have allowed at least three goals in every road game.NOTES: The Kings recalled Peter Budaj from Ontario of the American Hockey League to back up Campbell. F Michael Amadio was assigned to Ontario in a corresponding move. … Rangers D Adam McQuaid did not play after sustaining a lower-body injury in a 4-1 loss at Chicago on Thursday. Quinn said Saturday there was a chance McQuaid could be available for either of the final two games of the four-game trip.UP NEXTRangers: Continue their trip at San Jose on Tuesday.Kings: Host Philadelphia on Thursday. WASHINGTON (AP) An independent watchdog has cleared Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke of wrongdoing when he gave a speech to a National Hockey League team owned by a campaign contributor.The Office of Special Counsel said Zinke’s June 2017 speech to the Vegas Golden Knights did not violate the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits executive branch officials from engaging in political activities. The team’s owner, Bill Foley, contributed to Zinke’s Republican congressional campaigns and to President Donald Trump’s inauguration.The special counsel also cleared Zinke in two other related complaints in which he was accused of mixing political and official business. The office investigates whistleblower complaints against the executive branch.In a May 31 letter obtained by The Associated Press, the special counsel’s office said Zinke addressed the team in his role as Interior secretary and spoke about leadership and the importance of teamwork. There’s no evidence that Zinke gave a political speech or otherwise engaged in political activity , the letter said.Zinke’s speech has drawn scrutiny because of the political contributions by the team’s owner and because Interior spent more than $12,000 on a charter flight from Nevada to Zinke’s home state of Montana for a speech the next day. Zinke has said no commercial flight was available for the late-night flight that allowed him to address the hockey team and speak to Western governors the next day in Whitefish, Montana.A spokeswoman for Zinke said the special counsel’s letter marked the second time Zinke has been cleared of wrongdoing in the Las Vegas speech. The Interior Department’s inspector general said in April that Zinke’s use of a chartered flight was reviewed and approved by department ethics officials. Still, the flight could have been avoided if Interior employees had worked with the hockey team to accommodate Zinke’s schedule, the report said.”As the inspector general pointed out, the secretary always works with career ethics professionals and has followed all laws, rules and regulations related to his travel,” spokeswoman Heather Swift said.But Daniel Stevens, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, an ethics watchdog group, said Zinke’s speech was clearly political. ”The truth is, Secretary Zinke charged taxpayers more than $12 Womens Claude Giroux Jersey ,000 for a charter flight so he could give a speech to the employees of one of his top campaign donors,” Stevens said.The special counsel’s office also cleared Zinke in a March 2017 trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Zinke appeared as a guest at a GOP fundraiser and posed for photos with high-end donors. Zinke’s official title was omitted from invitations to the event, and the invitation did not specify that donors who made significant contributions could pose with Zinke, the counsel’s office said.”Your activity did not violate the Hatch Act because you were not the impetus for those higher contributions,” the counsel’s office said in a letter to Zinke. The letter was signed by Erica Hamrick, deputy chief of the counsel’s Hatch Act unit.The counsel’s office also cleared Zinke in seven trips he made from March 2017 to October 2017 that mixed official and political business. Interior asked for and received proper reimbursement for political elements of each of those trips, Hamrick said.Hamrick’s letter did not address a complaint filed in March by two Democratic congressmen who said Zinke may have violated the Hatch Act at a Feb. 24 event in Pennsylvania to announce grants to clean up abandoned mining sites nationwide. State Rep. Rick Saccone, the GOP nominee for Congress in a March 13 special election, attended the event. Democrats called the location and timing of the speech suspicious. Saccone lost to Democrat Conor Lamb.