LOS ANGELES (AP) The Los Angeles Kings know all about poor starts Milan Lucic Jersey Kids , their first periods at home being something less than highlight material of late.But they are nothing if not resilient, and after falling behind 2-0 to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday night, they stormed back for a 5-2 victory.”There are a lot of character guys in this room,” said forward Nate Thompson. ”They’ve been through a lot together. They’ve done a lot. It’s a veteran group that we know when we get down, that guys just dig deeper.”Thompson turned the momentum around by scoring the Kings’ first goal in the second period. It was his fifth goal of the season and first with the Kings since arriving in a Feb. 13 trade with Ottawa.”I thought the first goal by Thompson was huge for us,” said Kings coach John Stevens. ”It really got us going and we really had some momentum after that.”Alex Iafallo had two goals, and Tanner Pearson and Jeff Carter also scored for Los Angeles. Carter’s goal came on a shorthanded breakaway. Christian Folin had three assists and Jonathan Quick stopped 30 shots.Columbus coach John Tortorella also believed Thompson’s initial goal sparked the Kings.”I thought we lost our composure and never totally got it back,” Tortorella said. ”I don’t think the support was there like it was in the first period. They played better. We didn’t make enough plays. There were some plays to be made. We had some good minutes.”I thought Quick made some key saves. He played better and better as the game went on.”Cam Atkinson and Seth Jones scored the early goals for the Blue Jackets. Joonas Korpisalo saved 29 shots on goal for Columbus.Atkinson’s goal came from a nifty backwards pass from behind the net from Mat Calvert that went through the legs of Anze Kopitar and to the charging Atkinson, who snapped it behind Quick’s back.The Kings scored three times in the second period to take a lead they would never relinquish. They looked like a much different team than the one that trailed 2-0 after the first period.”They came out hot,” Folin said. ”We kind of got on our heels. You have to give them credit. They came out really good.”But we talked in the room after the first period Oscar Klefbom Jersey , that we needed to respond. We have 40 minutes to turn this thing around. And we did.”The Kings had played back-to-back games in a home-and-away series with the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday and Tuesday, but Stevens thought his team was ready for Columbus.”We were a step, maybe two steps, slow in the first period,” he said. ”It seemed like we were late to pucks, we were late to checks. They were playing the game at a lot higher pace than we were.”I think the room was ready, we were just a step off. We weren’t trying to change anything tactically, just our whole game pace had to come up a step and it did.”NOTES: The Kings signed their 2017 first-round pick (11th overall), Gabe Vilardi, to a three-year entry-level contract. The 18-year-old forward from Kingston http://www.officialoilers.com/authentic-adidas-ryan-nugent-hopkins-jersey , Ontario, has played in 134 career games in the Ontario Hockey League, totaling 142 points (60-82). … Iafallo scored twice Thursday, but had only six goals entering the game. … The Kings have won three straight and six of their last eight. … The Blue Jackets remain two points ahead of Carolina for the final wild-card berth in the Eastern Conference.UP NEXTBlue Jackets: Continue their three-game trip in California on Friday in Anaheim.Kings: Remain at home to play Chicago on Saturday.— 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 Ryan Strome Jersey , 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 Wayne Gretzky 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.