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LOS ANGELES, Calif. - When Joe Pavelski scored on the Sharks first shot, he evoked memories of San Joses banner-ceremony-spoiling win at Staples Center on opening night.The Los Angeles Kings spent the rest of the evening demonstrating why theyve got all the banners that count in this rivalry.Anze Kopitar and Jake Muzzin scored power-play goals, Jonathan Quick made 21 saves and the Kings returned from the holiday break with a 3-1 victory over their upstate rivals on Saturday night.Tyler Toffoli also scored in the defending Stanley Cup champions third victory in four games. The Kings forechecked impressively, passed sharply and played their vaunted puck-possession game to dominant effect, largely neutralizing the Sharks over the final 57 minutes after Pavelskis opening shot trickled through Quick.Everybody says the best defence is offence, anyway, said Kopitar, who had a goal and an assist on the power play. You keep the puck to yourself, and thats the best thing to do.Kopitar led the Kings once-struggling power play, which kept on humming after the break. Los Angeles has scored a power-play goal in five straight games, including multiple goals in four straight contests for the first time since March 1993.I think pucks are just going in for us, defenceman Drew Doughty said. We have so much firepower on our power-play units, and its finally coming together.Pavelski scored his 17th goal and Antti Niemi stopped 26 shots for the Sharks, who lost in regulation for just the second time since Nov. 26. San Jose uncharacteristically failed to stay out of the box, forced to kill more than three penalties for the first time in December.They were the better team the whole night, Sharks coach Todd McLellan said. We were beat in special teams, and that was evident, but theres much more to it than that. The grinding part of the game, we were beaten at as well. They were better on the walls. They were better at taking time and space away, and their forecheck was better. So theres no doubt the better team won tonight.Los Angeles also pulled even with San Jose in second place in the Pacific Division standings — a fact that means something to the Kings, who have won two Stanley Cups and 10 playoff series in the last three years despite winning no division titles.Theyre a division rival, so when you get points against them, its more than just two points, Doughty said. Its huge. We need to be moving up in the playoff standings and moving up in the division, and in order to do that, we need to beat division teams.Pavelski put the Sharks ahead just 2:39 in, capitalizing on a turnover by Justin Williams and a pass from Joe Thornton that turned out to be their lone offensive highlight.When the games are intense like this, you want to be at your best, and we werent tonight, Pavelski said. We werent very disciplined in a lot of areas. We gave up a lot of odd-man rushes and took a lot of penalties, things we havent been doing lately when we were winning.Toffoli evened it later in the period, snapping his personal 10-game goal drought on a remarkable cross-ice pass from defenceman Jamie McBain, who has points in three straight games. Toffoli, Marian Gaborik and Tanner Pearson have 11 goals apiece to lead the Kings.Kopitar then scored on a back-side rebound of Gaboriks shot in the second period. Four of his eight goals in a slow-starting offensive season have been on the power play.Muzzin added his sixth goal with a heavy shot on another power play early in the third.NOTES: Kopitars right ear was cut in the second period after apparently getting clipped an errant stick in front of the net. He went to the dressing room but returned moments later, putting off stitches until after the game. ... The Kings have won nine of their last 11 regular-season home games against the Sharks. ... 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He hoped to defy his doctors and race in the home Grand Tour he won in 2008 and 2012, but he says there have been complications in his recovery.NEW YORK, N.Y. - Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz already consider themselves relics.Baseball transformed during the second half of their careers and has been revolutionized in the five years since their final pitches.Out: big boppers.In: strict pitch limits, a profusion of relief pitchers and sudden swell in defensive shifts.Old goats is what Martinez called the newest Hall of Famers, products of another age — remember back before high definition TVs and mobile Internet browsers were commonplace?So much has changed so quickly.The game has kind of gone to a Stratomatic-type baseball game, where hitting is difficult because youre facing nine and 10 pitchers combined per team, Smoltz said Wednesday. Guys are not going attain 3,000 innings. Theyre not going to get 3,000 strikeouts.Vive le difference! seemed to be the motto of their joint news conference.Smoltz, pretty much average for a pitcher at 6-foot-3, stood on a chair to drop a cap onto the head of Johnson, the tallest of 215 Hall of Fame players at 6-foot-10. All the while, the Big Unit struggled to button his cream-colored jersey with Hall of Fame in red script, unable to line up the buttons with the correct buttonholes.Those left-handers, Johnson quipped.At 5-foot-11 the shortest pitcher picked for Cooperstown since Whitey Ford in 1974, Martinez held both hands up with fingers raised and smiled broadly.The trio of pitchers, elected to the Hall on Tuesday along with Craig Biggio, are among the all-time greats statistically, given the era they pitched in.Martinezs 2.93 career ERA is 1.47 below the big league average during the years he pitched, easily the best margin in major league history among pitchers with 1,500 or more innings, according to STATS. The next best are Carl Hubbell and Lefty Grove at 1.15, Hoyt Wilheim at 1.14, Greg Maddux at 1.13 and Roger Clemens at 1.12.Johnsons 1.01 is 13th and Smoltzs 0.97 is 15th.Speaking at a Manhattan hotel, Johnson said the game is just starting to get back into whack. He thinks pitching became more onerous in the 1990s and early 2000s because smaller ballparks replaced multiuse stadiums and Major League Baseball introduced QuesTec, a computer system put in place in 2001 to evaluate ball-strike calls. Umpires responded by shrinking strike zones back toward the rule-book ddefinition.dddddddddddd.When I watch old footage of pitchers throwing strikes from the letters to the knees, its black-and-white footage, back when dinosaurs roamed. Thats not the strike zone that I pitched in, he said. Things still are slighted towards offence. Offense is what creates fan base. But theres still well-pitched games out there, and things are starting to balance out now, yes, absolutely.Drug testing has played a part, too. Since urine samples started to be collected in 2003, offence has shrunk along with muscle mass. And the rise in computing capability has led to defensive shifts that take away hits, too.At the tail end of the Steroids Era in 2000, scoring rose to 5.14 runs per team per game and ERA to 4.76, the highest for both since 1930. By last year, runs dropped to 4.07 and ERA to 3.74, the lowest since the early 1970s.Every team seems to have hard-throwing relievers heading in from the bullpens in earlier and earlier innings.We never had a pitch limit, Smoltz said. Your managers eyes and pitching coach knew when your pitch limit reached the mechanical failures or the fact that you werent getting it done.Johnson won 303 games and struck out 4,875, second-most in major league history. Martinez was 219-100 and struck out 3,154. Smoltz went 213-155 with 154 saves and 3,084 strikeouts, the only pitcher with 200 wins and 150 saves.Martinez believes theres more of a level ground for every team these days because of changes such as revenue sharing and the luxury tax, which has created additional home-cooked product, made more teams contenders and heightened competition.I can only imagine, he said when asked whether his stats would be even better now. I dont know what it would be like. Im not going to try it. But Ill tell you what, I enjoyed the way I did it. I enjoyed my era. I enjoyed the way I competed. And thats the way I wanted it.Smoltz predicts additional evolution, perhaps a return to the era when starters went deeper into games. He thinks babying arms has led to more catastrophic injuries. He had a ligament replaced in 2000, then spent most of four seasons in the bullpen before returning to Atlantas rotation.Somethings got to change, he said. And I dont think condensing it and lowering the pitch limit is the reason that were going to save arms. ' ' '