Foothill gets into CIF-SS baseball playoffs, draws a familiar opponent in first round

• May 1, 2023

Foothill’s baseball team got the good news Monday morning that it had received a spot in the CIF Southern Section playoffs.

It might not seem like good news looking at Foothill’s first-round opponent — Santa Margarita — in the Division 1 bracket.

Santa Margarita is the division’s No. 2 seed and won the Trinity League with a wildly impressive 14-1 league record. It’s also ranked No. 1 in the Orange County Top 25.

But that probably won’t worry Foothill. The Knights beat Santa Margarita 6-4 on Feb. 22. And last year in the CIF-SS playoffs, the Knights beat the Eagles 5-4.

Foothill takes a 14-14 record into this year’s playoffs. They tied El Modena for third place in the four-team Crestview League.

Santa Margarita is 22-6.

Only the top two teams in a four-team league receive guaranteed playoff berths, so Foothill needed an at-large berth to get into the playoffs. The Knights were one of the two at-large teams selected to the 32-team Division 1 bracket; Orange Lutheran (17-10-1), the fourth-place team in the Trinity League, is the other.

Servite (14-14) was a Division 1 at-large candidate.

Foothill coach Chris Price said the game at Santa Margarita on Feb. 22 could help the Knights on Thursday.

“We’ll be familiar with their field,” Price said. “And we’ll see a similar lineup like we did back then. It’s not a foreign environment and we had some success against them.”

Another rematch of two Orange County teams is Dana Hills at Aliso Niguel in a Division 3 first-round game Thursday.

Aliso Niguel beat Dana Hills 9-5 on March 3.

Aliso Niguel, champion of the Sea View League, is 14-13. Dana Hills, which finished third in the South Coast League is 11-17. Both teams go into the playoffs hot, with Dana Hills having swept Trabuco Hills in three games last week and Aliso Niguel having won seven of its final eight regular-season games.

Crean Lutheran (19-8) is Orange County’s only No. 1-seeded team. The Saints, who finished third behind co-champions Cypress and Pacifica in the Empire League, are in Division 4.

The playoffs begin Tuesday with wild card games in Division 7. There are wild card games Wednesday in Divisions 2 and 6. Wild card games are required for divisions that need them to reduce their first-round fields to 32 teams.

First-round games are Thursday in Divisions 2, 4 and 6. First-round games are Friday in Divisions 1, 3, 5 and 7.

All divisions play second-round games May 9, quarterfinals May 12 and semifinals May 16. The championship games are May 19 and 20 at Blair Field in Long Beach.

On Monday afternoon the weather forecast for Thursday said there is a 60 percent chance of morning showers. Some games could be moved to Wednesday to avoid a rainout. Moving a game to Wednesday could be a more viable move than a Friday move because of umpire availability.

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​ Orange County Register 

3 people dead after small plane crashes near Big Bear Airport

• May 1, 2023

Three people died on Monday, May 1 after a small airplane crashed near the Big Bear Airport, authorities said.

Big Bear Fire was called to an aircraft down in a vacant lot at the corner of Paradise Way and Maltby Blvd., Big Bear City, at approx. 2:02 p.m. Crews arrived on scene in approx. three minutes. There were three souls on board, all of which perished as a result of this accident. pic.twitter.com/3EL3pOLXwg

— Big Bear Fire Dept (@bigbearfiredept) May 1, 2023

The Big Bear Fire Department said on social media it responded to an airplane down in a vacant lot at Paradise Way and Maltby Boulevard at around 2 p.m. The location is about a mile from the Big Bear Airport.

Crews found a small private plane that was severely damaged. Three people were found on board the plane, and were all pronounced dead at the scene. Their names were not immediately released.

The plane is a single-engine Beechcraft A36, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The crash will be investigated by the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board.

​ Orange County Register 

‘Searching for Savanna’ author Mona Gable investigates violence against Native American women

• May 1, 2023

The statistics are gut-wrenching.

On some reservations, Native American women are murdered at more than 10 times the national average.

Nearly one in three Native American and Alaska Native women will experience rape or attempted rape in their lifetime.

Los Angeles journalist and author Mona Gable – whose articles have been published in The Atlantic, Vogue and The Daily Beast, among others – has long reported on violence against women. She was somewhat aware of the long, troubling problem of unsolved cases involving missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

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And in recent years, Gable had started to get in touch with her own Native American heritage, researching the life and culture of her paternal grandmother Naomi Jones, a member of the Chickasaw Nation who had died in childbirth.

In an effort to reclaim some of the heritage that hadn’t been much talked about in her family, Gable says she “was just looking for Native American stories. I felt like my own education was really just wretched in terms of what we learned in California public schools about Native American tribes.”

So when Gable happened upon a news report about the bizarre, unexplained disappearance in North Dakota of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a 22-year-old Indigenous woman who was 8 months pregnant, her professional expertise and her personal interest collided: This was a story she needed to follow.

The result is “Searching for Savanna: The Murder of One Native American Woman and the Violence Against the Many,” published on April 25 by Atria. Gable will be appearing at Vroman’s to discuss the book on May 9.

In this true-crime saga, Gable chronicles the tragic and grotesque events – Savanna’s upstairs neighbors murdered her and tried to steal her infant; her body isn’t discovered for days – while exploring the complex interplay of culture, politics and racism that has entrenched violence against Native women.

She began researching the story over the phone: “I started calling people who were connected to the case, including the two female prosecutors who were really incredible. They were really fighting hard to see that Savanna got justice in the court system,” says Gable.

But quickly, she hit a wall – the people close to Savanna weren’t speaking to the media. “They’re super private and this was just so, so horrific for them,” she says.

Instead, they were busy organizing grassroots efforts that at first centered on the search for the missing Savanna, then on finding justice for her murder.

“They organized, like many Native American families end up having to do, because the police did not find her. They organized all these searches for her in Fargo and tribes from all over the Plains came to help. But also what was really fascinating to me was that the whole community in Fargo – which is a very small town and everybody kind of knows each other – all rallied behind the family, too.”

Gable would get to know the flight schedule to Fargo, North Dakota, very well over the course of four trips. “As soon as I could go to Fargo, I went to Fargo and I started trying to find people to interview about Savanna, who knew the family.”

It wasn’t easy, but eventually, she gained the trust of Savanna’s family and the community.

“I think a lot of it was just being patient, and if people didn’t want to talk to me, I respected that and then I would say, ‘Can I come back to you later?’ If they said yes, then I did that. Also, the prosecutors were very close to the family and they really vouched for me because I spent a lot of time with them. And so that’s really how I got my interview with Savanna’s mother,” she says.

Being on the ground in North Dakota helped imbue the story with details that otherwise would have been impossible to capture and helped her own understanding on many levels. “I felt it immediately when I was there that it was its own unique place and with its own politics, obviously, and culture. I visited Savanna’s reservation that she had grown up on. That was important to me to actually go there and talk to the tribal chief and see what it was like. I just try to be patient, and be empathic.”

Beyond the compelling story, by illuminating the problem of murdered and disappeared Native American women and their communities’ efforts to stop it, “Searching for Savanna” also takes on the true-crime narrative, which critics of the genre have called out for too often being exclusively centered around White victims and White law enforcement.

“I was very aware of that and that’s one reason I wanted to focus on the larger context,” Gable says. “Once I really found out how widespread this violence is and how long it had been going on against Native American women, I really wanted that to be a central theme of the book rather than just, ‘Oh, look at this horrific murder.’ What really motivated me was trying to not just tell Savanna’s story but the larger story of other women and girls, and what Native American advocates are doing – and have been doing – to try and draw attention to this problem.”

And in the process of writing the book, Gable found some of what she had been looking for personally: A deeper intimacy with her part of her family’s story.

“I think it was very affirming to me in the sense that I felt like it was something I really wanted to explore and, and felt good about exploring. In the back of my mind, I always was very wary about walking around saying, ‘Oh, I’m such and such percentage [Native American]’ –  especially when there was all this controversy surrounding Elizabeth Warren and her claiming Native American heritage she turns out not to have.”

Gable says she has “learned a lot” in the process of writing her book, and in fact is preparing to visit the Chickasaw nation of her grandmother, one of the five tribes that were forcibly relocated off their lands to go to Oklahoma on the infamous Trail of Tears.

“I just feel like I’m educating myself. Several Native American women that I’ve connected with in the process of this have been so welcoming, and all said to me, ‘It’s all about community. You don’t have to be ‘X-percent’ Native American. You don’t have to have grown up on the reservation. We want you to come home.’”

Mona Gable at Vroman’s

When: 7 p.m., May 9

Where: 695 E Colorado Blvd., Pasadena

Information: 626-449-5320, www.vromansbookstore.com/Mona-Gable-Searching-for-Savanna

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​ Orange County Register 

‘El Chapo’ sons charged with pushing cheap fentanyl into US

• May 1, 2023

By Christopher Sherman and Mark Stevenson | Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — With Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán serving a life sentence, his sons steered the family business into fentanyl, establishing a network of labs churning out massive quantities of the cheap, deadly drug that they smuggled into the U.S., prosecutors revealed in a recent indictment.

Although Guzmán’s trial revolved around cocaine shipments, the case against his sons exposes the inner workings of a cartel undergoing a generational shift as it worked “to manufacture the most potent fentanyl and to sell it in the United States at the lowest price,” according to the indictment unsealed April 14 in Manhattan.

Synthetic opioids — mostly fentanyl — now kill more Americans every year than died in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, feeding an argument among some politicians that the cartels should be branded terrorist organizations and prompting once-unthinkable calls for U.S. military intervention across the border.

“The problem with fentanyl, as some people at the State Department told me, has to be repositioned. It’s not a drug problem; it’s a poisoning problem,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst in Mexico, who died Friday. “Very few people go out deliberately looking for fentanyl.”

Hope predicted fentanyl would probably become an issue in next year’s U.S. elections, but he opposed any threat of U.S. intervention, saying “I don’t think that would be a very good way of addressing a public health issue.”

The groundwork for the U.S. fentanyl epidemic was laid more than 20 years ago, with aggressive over-prescribing of the synthetic opioid oxycodone. As U.S. authorities clamped down on its prescription, users moved to heroin, which the Sinaloa cartel happily supplied.

But making its own fentanyl — far more potent and versatile than heroin — in small, easily concealed labs was a game changer. The cartel went from its first makeshift fentanyl lab to a network of labs concentrated in the northern state of Sinaloa in less than a decade.

“These are not super labs, because they give people the illusion that they’re like pharmaceutical labs, you know, very sophisticated,” said Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. “These are nothing more than metal tubs and they use wooden paddles — even shovels — to mix the chemicals.”

A single cartel “cook” can press fentanyl into 100,000 counterfeit pills every day to fool Americans into thinking they’re taking Xanax, Percocet or oxycodone. The pills are smuggled over the border to supply what son Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar said are “streets of junkies,” the indictment said.

Fentanyl is so cheap to make that the cartel reaps massive profits even wholesaling the drug at 50 cents per pill, prosecutors said.

The drug’s potency makes it particularly dangerous. The narcotic dose of fentanyl is so close to the lethal dose that a pill meant to ensure a high for a habituated user can easily kill a less experienced person taking something they didn’t know was fentanyl.

Between August 2021 and August of last year, more than 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, most from synthetic opioids. Last year, the DEA seized more than 57 million fentanyl-laced counterfeit prescription pills, according to the New York indictment.

To protect and expand that business, the “Chapitos,” as the sons are known, have turned to grotesque violence, prosecutors said.

Enforcers Ivan Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar are the lead defendants among 23 associates charged in the New York indictment. Ovidio Guzmán López, alias “the Mouse,” who allegedly pushed the cartel into fentanyl, is charged in another indictment in the same district. Mexico arrested him in January and the U.S. government has requested extradition. Joaquín Guzmán López is charged in the Northern District of Illinois.

According to the Guzmán Salazar indictment, the cartel does some lab testing on its product but conducts more grisly human testing on kidnapped rivals or addicts who are injected until they overdose.

The purity of the cartel’s fentanyl “varies greatly depending on the method and skill of the particular manufacturer,” prosecutors noted. After a user overdosed on one batch, it was still shipped to the U.S.

When the elder Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada led the Sinaloa cartel, it operated with a certain degree of restraint. But with Guzmán serving a life sentence and Zambada believed to be suffering from health issues, the Chapitos moved aggressively to avoid a power vacuum that could fragment the cartel.

“What was really a unique advantage of the Sinaloa cartel and El Chapo was the ability to calibrate violence,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institute.

The wide-ranging New York indictment against the Guzmán Salazar brothers details their penchant for feeding enemies to their pet tigers and describes how they tortured two Mexican federal agents, ripping through one’s muscles with a corkscrew then stuffing the holes with chile peppers before shooting him.

The indictment also provides context to some recent violence in Mexico.

In August 2022, gunmen shot up Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas. Two prison inmates and nine civilians in the city were killed. U.S. prosecutors say the Chapitos’ security arm ordered their local gang associates to commit the violence, targeting a rival cartel’s businesses.

“This is not their father’s Sinaloa cartel,” Felbab-Brown said. “These guys just operate in very different mindsets than their father.”

The Guzmán Salazar indictment makes an initial attempt at disrupting the cartel’s supply chain, naming four people tied to a China-based chemical company and a broker in Guatemala who allegedly helped the cartel get the chemicals and even instructed them on the best recipes for fentanyl.

“When they talk about labs and you’re trying to focus in on labs, that’s not going to have an impact unless you get the finished product or the precursor chemicals,” Vigil said.

Mexico’s government has stumbled through the mixed messaging of its security forces playing up their decommissioning of labs even while President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has asserted that fentanyl is not being produced in Mexico.

In congressional testimony Thursday, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram was pressed about whether Mexico and China are doing enough to cooperate with U.S.

“We want the Mexicans to work with us and we want them to do more,” Milgram said, adding that the DEA wouldn’t hesitate to go after public officials in Mexico or elsewhere should it find evidence of ties to the cartels.

Experts say López Obrador is one obstacle to slowing the cartels’ fentanyl production. After U.S. prosecutors announced the concerted effort against the Sinaloa cartel, López Obrador reacted angrily. The president accused the U.S. government of “spying” and “interference,” suggesting that the case had been built on information gathered by U.S. agents in Mexico.

The president had already severely reduced Mexico’s cooperation with the DEA, experts said.

Hope, the security analyst, said a fundamental problem is that López Obrador doesn’t appear to understand fentanyl’s threat. The president rails against a deterioration of family values in the United States and paints addiction as a moral failing.

“He’s trapped in a moral universe from 50 years ago,” Hope said.

​ Orange County Register 

Power of One: Disneyland Resort Hotels Cast Member Charts Her Own Course with COMPASS

• May 1, 2023

As part of the Disney100 Celebration at Disneyland Resort and “World of Color – ONE” spectacular, we are highlighting cast members who, like our new show, exemplify how one small idea or action — like a single drop of water — can create a ripple that grows into a wave of positive change. Today, let’s meet Allie Kawamoto Choy, Experience Integration manager for Hotels of the Disneyland Resort. 

By Lisa Greathouse

If you take a walk around the Disneyland Resort with Allie Kawamoto Choy, be prepared to be stopped.

A lot.

That’s because she is one of those cast members every other cast member seems to know – and wants to chat with.

It may be because she’s worked in both theme parks and at the Hotels of the Disneyland Resort over her 16-year career. Or it may be because she attained local celebrity status during her two years (2015-16) as a Disney Ambassador during the resort’s 60th anniversary. Or it might be that you’re likely to run into her at Disney VoluntEARS events in the community. Or maybe it’s her role as a leader in COMPASS, the Business Employee Resource Group (BERG) dedicated to advocating, celebrating and educating on behalf of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

But most likely, it’s because Kawamoto has taken all of the above and woven her experience and passion with genuine kindness, creativity and a can-do spirit to connect people and create partnerships.

“Disney has a really special company culture, and groups like Disney VoluntEARS and COMPASS have kept me engaged as a cast member all these years,” said Kawamoto, who joined the company through the Disney College Program in 2007. In that first year, a fellow cast member invited her to attend a meeting to learn more about COMPASS, and that one event inspired Kawamoto to get involved and ultimately, to find ways to infuse her Japanese heritage with her passion for Disney.

Since then, Kawamoto counts her work as a co-chair with COMPASS among her proudest accomplishments. One example is her collaboration with the Resort Enhancement team on the Emporium retail display windows this May and last to represent Children’s Day in celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Children’s Day is a public holiday in Japan, and the window display includes Japanese elements like the koinobori carp streamers (seen in top photo) to symbolize willpower and success and toys that represent other Asian and Pacific Islander cultures, as well.

“Having a window display on Main Street, U.S.A., to honor this holiday meant the world to me and to so many fellow cast members,” she said. “Seeing a piece of your culture authentically represented in the park is so meaningful. And being able to bring my [then] 10-month-old son to see it made it even more special.”

Kawamoto’s passion to share her heritage also comes in handy in her current role as Experience Integration manager at the three Hotels of the Disneyland Resort, where she helps to bring the themes and celebrations from the theme parks into the guest experience at the hotels. For instance, during last year’s Lunar New Year celebration at Disney California Adventure park, she worked with various partners to add Lunar New Year artwork to the hotel key card holders.

“The work Allie has done with COMPASS and creating synergies in her own role have made a huge impact,” said Connie McCallon, Kawamoto’s leader and director of Hotel Strategy. “Her ability to forge meaningful relationships benefits the business while also supporting our cast and community.”

Whether she is planning events at the hotels or serving as a cultural consultant, Kawamoto says that working at Disneyland Resort during the 100th anniversary celebration of The Walt Disney Company is a dream come true.

“I’ve been a Disney fan for as long as I can remember, so to be able to work for the company during its 100th anniversary is a little surreal,” she said. “I feel incredibly fortunate.”

​ Orange County Register 

Orange County baseball stat leaders: Final 2023

• May 1, 2023

Support our high school sports coverage by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribe now

Final Orange County baseball stat leaders for the 2023 regular season

To be included, teams must have their stats up to date on the MaxPreps.com leaderboards.

HOME RUNS

Name, school                                                     HR           PA           GP

Chase Brunson, San Clemente                             7           112            28

Lucas Marinelli, Portola                                         6             99            26

Connor Sunderland, Fullerton                               6             99            25

Jake Beauchaine, Capistrano Valley Christian     6            105            28

Aidan Espinoza, Huntington Beach                      5            109            28

Raffaele Velazquez, Huntington Beach                5            111            28

Roman Blaser, Newport Harbor                            4             74            23

Johnny Lopez, Canyon                                         4             84            23

Neil Navarro, Buena Park                                     4             89            27

Logan Kelly, Capistrano Valley Christian              4             92            26

Gavin Grahovac, Villa Park                                   4           116             2

Brandon Winokur, Edison                                      3             44           12

Andrew Grove, Villa Park                                       3             94           25

Bradley Navarro, Huntington Beach                       3            95           28

Isaac Cadena, Valencia                                          3            96           27

Jake Wood, San Clemente                                     3            96           28

Nate Norman, Fullerton                                           3           97           25

Kade Murray, Dana Hills                                          3           97           27

Tyler Holland, Mission Viejo                                    3          101           29

Zach Brown, Villa Park                                            3          104           28

Josiah Hartshorn, Orange Lutheran                        3          105           28

RUNS BATTED IN

Name, school                                                      RBI           PA          GP

Grady Jackson, Costa Mesa                                   35          104          26

Connor Sunderland, Fullerton                                 32            99          25

Rylan Morris, Sunny Hills                                        26            89          22

Lucas Marinelli, Portola                                           26            99          26

Sam Stute, Costa Mesa                                           24            98          25

Brandon Tatch, Aliso Niguel                                     24          101          27

Malachi Meni, Fullerton                                            23            91          25

Anthony De Marco, Woodbridge                              23            99          28

Keenan Anzai, Mission Viejo                                    23          108          29

Peter Mellana, Sunny Hills                                       22             82         22

Nate Norman, Fullerton                                            22             97         25

Josiah Hartshorn, Orange Lutheran                         22           105         28

Raffaele Velazquez, Huntington Beach                    22           111          28

Logan Kelly, Capistrano Valley Christian                  21             92         26

Zach Brown, Villa Park                                             21            104        28

Wylan Rottschafer, Costa Mesa                               21            105        25

Aidan Espinoza, Huntington Beach                          21            109        28

RUNS

Name, school                                                        Runs          PA          GP

Wylan Rottschafer, Costa Mesa                                36           105          25

Chase Brunson, San Clemente                                 32           112          28

Connor Sunderland, Fullerton                                    31            99          25

Sam Stute, Costa Mesa                                             29            98          25

Omar Gutierrez, Costa Mesa                                     27            81          24

Zach Fany, Fullerton                                                  27          101          25

Derek Curiel, Orange Lutheran                                  27          110          28

Chase Quezada, Woodbridge                                    26          100          28

Brandon Abernathy, Woodbridge                               26          104          28

Joey Sangenito, Bolsa Grande                                   25           95          23

Gavin Grahovac, Villa Park                                         25         116          28

EARNED-RUN AVERAGE

Name, school                                                          ERA          IP         ER

Griffin Naess, Laguna Beach                                    0.16        44.0         1

Zack Marker, Edison                                                 0.71        19.2         2

Tyler Bellerose, Huntington Beach                           0.72         29.0         3

Matthew Viveros, La Habra                                      0.76         37.0         4

Beau Schweitzer, Laguna Hills                                 0.83         42.1         5

Tyler Onofre, Kennedy                                              0.83         42.0         5

Andrew Parker, Foothill                                             0.94         59.1         8

Justin Durby, Woodbridge                                         0.98         21.1         3

Matt Carbajal, Fullerton                                             0.99         49.1         7

Jared Day, La Habra                                                 1.01          48.1         7

Matthew Kuromoto, Woodbridge                              1.03          61.1         9

Andrew Grove, Villa Park                                         1.06          26.1          4

Cohen Gomez, Canyon                                            1.08          39.0          6

Hunter Long, Capistrano Valley Christian                 1.10          51.0          8

Mike Erspamer, San Clemente                                  1.11         44.0           7

STRIKEOUTS

Name, school                                                          K              BF             IP

Hunterr Long, Capistrano Valley Christian              87            204           51.0

Brandon Luu, Villa Park                                           78           221           53.1

Landon Martin, Sonora                                            71           287           66.1

Kyler FitzPatrick, Laguna Hills                                 70           227           57.1

Dominic Viglione, Newport Harbor                           69           231           51.1

Will Clark, Costa Mesa                                             69           256          61.1

Andrew Vega, Bolsa Grande                                    68           226          50.2

Michael Joyce, Costa Mesa                                     67           264          59.0

Joon Lee, Irvine                                                        65          258           61.2

Shea Blanchard, Laguna Beach                               62          196           48.2

Carson Lane, Huntington Beach                               61         200            44.1

Matthew Kuromoto, Woodbridge                              59          243            61.1

Cooper Berger, University                                        58          213            55.0

Austen Barnett, University                                        57          240            57.2

Jared Day, La Habra                                                 56          192            48.1

Jonathan Rodriguez, Valencia                                  56          193            37.1

​ Orange County Register 

UCLA spring football energy is proving contagious

• May 1, 2023

LOS ANGELES — Throughout spring football practices, UCLA’s defensive players have boasted about their ability to play with energy. They’ve had catchphrases like, “The more tired we get, the more ‘lit’ we get,” and they practice with bravado during team periods.

The mood is infectious among the defense, but it benefits the offense, too.

“They’re gonna challenge you every day, but also it’s going to be competitive and we came here to strive to get better,” receiver Kam Brown said. “You really can’t take a break for the defense we already know they’re going to come with that energy every day, so we’ve got to come right back with it.”

Monday marked the start of the final week of spring practices. Players came out in helmets and shoulder pads and practice ended a half hour earlier than usual as recovery becomes the focus for the final days of spring.

Practice was just long enough to show the offense’s compete level against the defense. Quarterback Dante Moore, who is a contender for a starting job, hit Braden Pegan with roughly a 40-yard pass during a 7-on-7 drill.

“We were a big running team last year,” Pegan said. “We did throw the ball a lot, but I think this year we’re going to be a big-throwing, deep-threat kind of team. So I think I’m really excited about that.”

Receiver Logan Loya also made a diving catch on a pass from Ethan Garbers in an 11-on-11 live period during Monday morning’s practice and Jeremiah McClure hauled in a 20-yard pass from Collin Schlee.

The Bruins lost their two top receivers of last season to graduation — Jake Bobo led with 817 yards and seven touchdowns and Kazmeir Allen was next with 403 yards and two touchdowns.

Their departure leaves room for experienced players like Brown, who ranked third on the team last season with 362 receiving yards in his redshirt-junior campaign. Transfers J.Michael Sturdivant (Cal) and Kyle Ford (USC) will battle for playing time as well as developing talent like Pegan, who is entering his sophomore season after getting into four games as a freshman.

The depth that’s building in the receiver room gives players almost as much energy as going against the Bruins defense does.

“I’m excited for it,” Brown said. “The more playmakers you can have on the field, that makes everybody’s job easier. It’ll make my job easier, their job easier, everybody and to work collectively as a unit and get everybody on the same page is something that every football player loves.”

Receivers value their position coach

Jerry Neuheisel is in his third season as the wide receivers coach, and players are reaping benefits from working with him.

Neuheisel is one of the youngest people on the coaching staff as a 2016 graduate of UCLA, where he was a backup quarterback and even earned the Charles Pike Memorial Award for Outstanding Scout Team Player his freshman year.

“He tells us what the quarterback sees,” Brown said, “because a lot of times, we may see it from our point of view, but coming from the guy who throws the ball out there and what he’s looking for, he gives us great pointers all the time.”

Last season, UCLA’s offense threw for a total of 3,463 yards and 29 touchdowns and averaged over 500 yards of total offense for the first time.

Back on the field with the receivers this spring, Neuheisel looks and sounds like a quarterback when he coaches, throwing tight spirals and speaking with a firm and quick cadence.

“He’ll throw deep balls and he’ll drop it in,” Pegan said with a laugh.

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​ Orange County Register 

Kings’ playoff exit hurt more because team was so close

• May 1, 2023

EL SEGUNDO — As the NHL’s first round crashed to a close with a Game 7 in New Jersey on Monday, the Kings were left to lick their wounds from a fierce battle with the Edmonton Oilers, who eliminated the black and silver in six games on Saturday.

While it’s a familiar feeling – they were eliminated by Edmonton in seven games during last year’s opening round – the Kings spoke of novel coalescence and a bright future at Sunday’s exit interviews, while still healing from a series that featured a pair of overtime games and two one-goal games.

“In the group, this year, the camaraderie in the room was amazing. Every guy would do anything for each other, and you’d feel that every day in practice and every day in games,” center Blake Lizotte said. “When you have a team that’s like that, that has a special bond away from the rink, these losses sting quite a bit more when you’d give the shirt off your back for everyone in the room.”

Lizottte has been a career King, but even newly acquired winger and top point-per-game scorer Kevin Fiala felt the love, despite being disappointed with the Kings’ finish.

“It felt like home, quickly. I’d been in Nashville and Minnesota longer than here, and I feel like I’ve been here the longest,” Fiala said.

Here is a quick glance at the pluses and minuses of what was, by points total, the second-best regular-season in the 55-year history of the franchise.

Special Teams

Plus: The power-play

Minus: The penalty kill

Not only did the Kings make a historic about-face on the power play, which General Manager Rob Blake attributed to a combination of improved personnel and competition between units, they carried their success into the postseason, connecting on one third of their opportunities.

Over a full season, that would have been the best mark in NHL history, edging out this year’s Oilers. Edmonton set the record during the campaign and then exploded for a 57.1% mark in the postseason, which once again exposed a Kings penalty kill that struggled through the bulk of the season.

“Power play was a difference, a huge turning point for us this year, we gained a lot of momentum and we won a lot of games like that, too,” center Phillip Danault said. “We needed to be better on the kill, that was obvious.”

Offense

Plus: Production

Minus: Timely scoring

Where two years ago the Kings could barely muster one scoring line, flanking Kopitar with an aging Dustin Brown and utility man Alex Iafallo, last year they cobbled together a pace-generating second line and this year they often featured their leading scorer and a 20-plus-goal-scorer, Gabe Vilardi, on their third line. The results were tangible as the Kings finally reified the vision of Coach Todd McLellan for a high-tempo, high-chance, high-possession and, now, high-scoring system, all while playing a stingy 1-3-1 trap that flummoxed many attacks.

Yet in the playoffs, the Kings scored their two overtime winners following Edmonton penalties and, in one case, because of an alleged missed high stick as well. After four hermetically sealed affairs to begin the series, Edmonton came up with a decisive win in Game 5 and a late tiebreaker in Game 6 that sealed the Kings’ fate. While the Kings had dominated five-on-five play and mostly been burned by two of the three Edmonton 100-point scorers this season as well as its power play, Game 6 saw Edmonton accumulate four even-strength goals, two of which came from their fourth line.

“We were flat-out a better team this year than last year. We were because of personnel, the players that we had available to us and we improved in a lot of areas. But, to my point, so was Edmonton,” said McLellan, who coached Edmonton for more than three seasons.

Defense

Plus: Depth

Minus: Decisions

The Kings’ went from lacking a serviceable NHL defense corps to burgeoning with options in short order, but they’ve still got pieces of their blue-line puzzle strewn about the dinner table. Sean Durzi played a significant and clear-cut role quarterbacking the second power-play unit and also showed growth as a penalty killer. But his five-on-five role saw him shift sides, change partners and ultimately drop to the third pairing once Vladislav Gavrikov was acquired from Columbus. Durzi appreciated the experience but seemed to hint at a desire for more consistency, much as Fiala did when asked about his linemates.

Though veteran Alex Edler seems like a long shot to return to the Kings and Sean Walker expressed doubts about his being a King next year, despite being under contract, that’s not the extent of their moving pieces on defense. They would like to re-sign Gavrikov, an unrestricted free agent to be, give Durzi a solid evaluation in his upcoming contract year and also integrate some prospects. Jordan Spence mostly bided his time in Ontario this year and prospect Brandt Clarke returned to the OHL to put up nearly two points a game against his peers. Blake said, in so many words, that he’d penciled Clarke into the Kings’ lineup. McLellan added that, much as they’d done with changing some of captain Anze Kopitar’s responsibilities to reduce fatigue, he was ruminating on how to ease some pressure off top defenseman Drew Doughty.

“We’ll have to look at managing him a little bit,” McLellan said. “That’s probably a fight we’ll have because he wants to play 26 minutes a night and he’s very capable of it, but we need to get (80-plus) games out of him.”

Goaltending

Plus: It made it through the season

Minus: Who knows what’s next?

In a puzzling move, former GM Dean Lombardi invested the first pick the Kings had in the 2011 draft into Christopher Gibson, when the organization had a budding Jonathan Quick and the tantalizing prospect Jonathan Bernier. Since that point, the Kings haven’t invested anything higher than a third-round pick into a goalie and their limited commitments have been even more fruitless than they have been sparing.

This season, they cycled through Cal Petersen, who was sent to the minors and fared worse than expected there; Quick, whose potential hall-of-fame tenure came to an abrupt and unceremonious end at the trade deadline; Pheonix Copley, who’d last seen regular NHL duty in 2019; and Joonas Korpisalo, the impending UFA who started all six playoff games.

Copley is signed for next season at a modest cap hit, while Petersen’s carries a whopping $5 million annual average value. On a day where both goalies drew a little attention and praise, there was also talk of re-signing Korpisalo, meaning any quotes might only add to the confusion in net.

Coaching, health and intangibles

Though leading postseason scorer and top goal-scorer Adrian Kempe said the series might have been different if the Kings were fully healthy (three important forwards missed at least one game), they lost significantly fewer man games to injury this season and had their full array of players available for Game 6.

McLellan will return for the fifth season of his five-year contract, and one could expect assistants Jim Hiller and Trent Yawney back. McLellan and Edmonton coach Jay Woodcroft, who remained the closest of friends, paused their relationship again during the series but resumed it immediately at the series’ conclusion. Woodcroft’s theatrics, including requesting a podium rather than a table for the postgame news conference and some braggadocious moments behind said podium, receded as he became highly complimentary of McLellan and his staff following Game 6. McLellan returned the favor Sunday but, in the NHL as in all sports, the players win championships. With Quick gone, Doughty and Kopitar are the last vestiges of the only two Stanley Cups in Kings lore, from 2012 and 2014, as other big-game performers like Kempe and Danault hope to add to the organization’s legacy.

“I’ve seen this group mature now,” Kopitar said. “I think this window, if we’re not quite in there yet, is approaching. We’re taking strides in the right direction, the group is getting tight and I’ve seen that before.”

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​ Orange County Register