Tag: General News

PARADISE — Approximately 600 Pacific Gas and Electric customers along Neal Road southwest of Paradise lost electricity due to a car crash Saturday.

A passenger car crashed into a power pole at Neal Road and McCann Drive at about 1:45 p.m., causing an outage that affected 594 addresses northeast to the Skyway. PG&E had originally estimated power restoration by 8:45 p.m. Saturday, but crews were able to get the lights back on by 2:45 p.m.

Twenty-one addresses still were without electricity at 5 p.m., according to the PG&E website. These customers were concentrated in the area near the crash site, on both sides of Neal Road and along Fawnridge Court, Sunnyside Lane and Royal Meadow Lane.

PG&E’s estimate for power restoration remained 8:45 p.m. for these addresses.

There were no injuries reported as a result of the crash.

As expected, both Chico High and Pleasant Valley earned first-round byes in the Northern Section Division II playoffs when they were announced Saturday morning.

The D-II playoffs will begin at 7 p.m. Thursday night.

Red Bluff, coming off of a 17-14 loss at Shasta on Friday night, will open the NSCIF D-II playoffs at Foothill. The game is one of two D-II playoff games to open the NSCIF playoffs. The 5-5 Spartans enter as the No. 5 seed in the D-II bracket. Foothill, also 5-5, is the No. 4 seed. Foothill defeated Red Bluff 34-6 in the lone regular-season matchup on Oct. 13 in Palo Cedro.

Enterprise (4-6) comes in as the No. 6 seed and will play at No. 3 Shasta, which beat the Spartans with a double pass late in the 4th quarter on Friday night. The two Redding schools face off Oct. 13 at Enterprise and the Wolves defeated the Hornets 27-20.

The winner between Red Bluff and Foothill will play Eastern Athletic League champion and No. 1 seed Chico High (9-1) on November 17 at Chico High. The Shasta-Enterprise winner will travel to Pleasant Valley (7-3) to play the No. 2 seed on the same date.

Division III

The D-III playoffs will begin Friday night when No. 8 Central Valley travels to No. 1 University Prep. It will be the second weekend in a row that the two schools have met. The Panthers (9-1) beat the Falcons (3-7) 45-13 on Friday night.

Defending Northern Section champion and CIF Division 5-A state champion, and this year’s No. 2 Orland will open its title defense against the No. 7 West Valley on Friday in Orland. The Trojans are 8-1, while the Eagles are 3-7.

Also, on Friday night, No. 3 Gridley (7-3) will host No. 6 Live Oak (6-4), while No. 4 Pierce (7-3) will play host to Lassen (5-5).

All these games kick off at 7 p.m.

Division IV

Top-seeded Colusa (10-0) and No. 2 Winters (7-3) will get first-round byes, with first-round action starting Friday night.

No. 4 East Nicolaus (5-5) will host No. 5 Williams (3-7), while No. 3 Hamilton (8-2) will play host to No. 6 Trinity (4-6).

Both games start at 7 p.m.

Division V

There were no surprises in this D-V bracket, as 10-0 Portola will get the No. 1 seed and a bye, as will No. 2 Weed (8-2).

Los Molinos clinched the No. 4 seed with a 35-0 win over Etna to end the regular season. It was the fourth straight win for Los Molinos (7-3) and earned the Bulldogs a rematch with Fall River (7-3), a team they beat last Friday 32-28 in McArthur. It was the first win in school history over that school and was the first home loss for Fall River in eight seasons.

SAN JOSE – Erik Karlsson said after last season that he wouldn’t have minded remaining with the San Jose Sharks had he been in his early twenties instead of his early thirties.

Despite the Sharks having the worst record in the NHL, Karlsson said he remained bullish on the team’s future and is a believer in general manager Mike Grier’s plan as the franchise continues with a rebuild that could last for a few more seasons.

“It’s an unfortunate part of the business and the cycle, where the team and the organization are right now,” Karlsson, 33, said. “Unfortunately, the clock is ticking a little bit faster (for me) than I would have liked.

“The people that came in, the people that are trying to shape this (are) good people. They have good intentions and a purposeful plan.”

Karlsson in August was traded by the Sharks to Pittsburgh in a three-team deal that brought back to San Jose forwards Mikael Granlund and Matt Hoffman, defenseman Jan Rutta, and a conditional Penguins first-round draft pick. The deal also frees up $10 million in salary cap space for the Sharks for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 seasons.

The Sharks, prior to Saturday night’s game with the Penguins at SAP Center, were 0-9-1 and one loss away from tying the NHL record for most consecutive defeats to start a season. They had scored 10 goals in 10 games, desperately missing the production Karlsson provided last season with 101 points in 82 games.

Karlsson pointed to the Colorado Avalanche, which finished with just 48 points in a dreadful 2016-17 season but later won the Stanley Cup. That Avalanche team already had some young stars to build around, though, in forwards Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, and Mikko Rantanen.

The Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 2022 and are one of the favorites again this season.

“Easy example is we look at Colorado six, seven years ago, where they were,” Karlsson said. “There was no one who thought that they would be as dominant as they have been for the last couple of years and looking like they will be for the foreseeable future.

“Even though things are not looking the best, maybe right now, (the Sharks) are going somewhere that’s going to be for the better and going somewhere with a purpose. It’s just going to need some patience and some time.”

INJURY UPDATE: Sharks goalie Kaapo Kahkonen, who was injured in Thursday’s game against the Vancouver Canucks, felt better Saturday and was on the ice after the morning skate with presumptive scratches Kevin Labanc and Ty Emberson. The Sharks recalled Magnus Chrona from the Barracuda on Friday to back up Mackenzie Blackwood for Saturday’s game. Chrona played Friday night in Calgary and stopped 34 of 35 shots in the Barracuda’s 1-0 road loss.

SULLIVAN ON QUINN: Sharks coach David Quinn got a vote of confidence from his former Boston University teammate, Penguins coach Mike Sullivan, before Saturday’s game.

Quinn is just starting his second season with the Sharks and had a record of 22-57-13 before Saturday, never climbing above a .500 points percentage.

“(Quinn’s) a very good teacher,” said Sullivan, who played with Quinn at BU during the 1986-87 season, five years before he joined the Sharks for their inaugural season in the NHL. “He has a good understanding of the game, a good command of the x’s and o’s, and not only that, he understands how to help players improve and grow and get better. I think his (coaching) experience in college hockey would really help them in that regard, just dealing with the younger generation and trying to help players grow and develop as people.

“That’s one of the strengths of his coaching.”

SULLIVAN ON WILSON: Sullivan said he was excited to learn earlier this year that his ex-Sharks teammate Doug Wilson would be joining the Penguins as a senior advisor of hockey operations. Wilson, the Sharks GM for 19 seasons, was officially hired by the Penguins in September and reports to Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas.

SAN JOSE – Speculation continued for months earlier this year as to how the San Jose Sharks were going to trade Erik Karlsson and get decent value in return without retaining a huge amount of money.

Finally, when the three-team trade was finalized on Aug. 6 and Karlsson became a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Sharks had kept only $1.5 million of the three-time Norris Trophy winner’s $11.5 million salary cap hit on their books through the end of the 2026-2027 season.

In the offseason, Sharks president Jonathan Becher said general manager Mike Grier spoke to either him or owner Hasso Plattner nearly every other day over an approximately eight-week period about where the trade process stood.

“There were occasional GMs that lobbed lowball offers at us,” Sharks president Jonathan Becher said recently, but that in the end, “there were three, sometimes four teams that were in the neighborhood of a reasonable deal, and eventually we got one done that makes sense.”

Karlsson and the Penguins play the Sharks tonight and while one can quibble about the return — Mikael Granlund, Mike Hoffman, Jan Rutta, and a first-round draft pick from Pittsburgh — the key component to the trade from San Jose’s perspective was creating an extra $10 million in cap space for both the 2025-26 and 2026-27 seasons.

But Becher said the trade didn’t happen the way it did just because Plattner wanted to save money. At the time, Karlsson was owed over $35 million.

“I don’t think that was Hasso’s decision,” Becher said. “I think that’s the three of us that came to the conclusion that of the balance of things we can do, this is the best way to handle this situation. To make that Hasso’s decision is a little bit of a simplification.”

So does the Karlsson trade provide a blueprint for how the Sharks will approach any future trades of players on costly, long-term contracts?

Not necessarily, Becher said.

“I think in general, no GM, no president no owner wants to retain a bunch of money. That’s just not the right thing to do, in general, to pay someone not to play for you,” he said. “Having said that, in every situation you do a little bit of a calculus for this particular player for this market that exists right now.

“Last offseason was a market that we haven’t seen in a long time. The salary cap only went up by $1 million. There were more free agents out in the market than there had been in the past. So you can’t make a blanket decision which is, ‘I’ll retain a lot.’ You have to understand what else is going on and who might be able to use that person’s service. Karlsson’s not useful to many teams, (but) he’s useful for other teams. Then you make the decision, for this person, maybe we can retain up to ‘X’ but only if we get this much draft capital or these kinds of prospects.”

The NHL salary cap is projected to rise from $83.5 million to between $87-$88 million next season when the players will have paid back the owners in full the roughly $1.5 billion escrow debt they incurred in the 2019-20 season.

“So maybe you even have to retain less, or not anything, or if you’re a team doing a trade because now people have more capital to use,” Becher said. “That’s what makes this business interesting.”

Just like he did for Karlsson and Brent Burns, who both sought trades to win-now teams with the Sharks still rebuilding, Grier said at the start of training camp that he would listen if a veteran like Logan Couture or Tomas Hertl came to him looking to move to more of a playoff-contending team.

Grier has said he’s not looking to trade either Couture, 34, or Hertl, 29, and neither centerman has said they want to be traded. But like Karlsson, those players could also be nearing the stages of their respective careers where being a part of a long rebuild would lack appeal.

“If I thought it was going to be a five-, six-, seven-year rebuild, then obviously things would change,” Couture told NHL.com in August. “But I think Mike has done a good job of retooling (with) some really good (draft) picks. It’s tough to predict what happens a couple of years from now, but I’m excited about this season. I want to turn this thing around here in San Jose.”

Nora Ephron’s warmhearted spirit buoys “What Happens Later,” Meg Ryan’s welcome return to film rom-coms, the genre that turned her into one of America’s sweethearts — and most popular actors — in the late ‘80s and ‘90s.

Those were the days when she was known for her effervescent gold-standard performances in “When Harry Met Sally” (written by Ephron) and “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail” (directed and co-written by Ephron).

In the same vein of those rom-com essentials, “What Happens Later” tells a sentimental, defiantly uncynical story. That’s by intention, says its star.

“This is a movie that just has its heart on its sleeve and that’s the boldest thing about it,” Ryan said. “It’s just vulnerable.”

Ryan not only stars in “What Happens Later,” she directs, serves as an executive producer and co-wrote the film with playwright Steven Dietz. It’s is Dietz’ stage comedy “Shooting Star,” which Ryan says she has not seen, that is the basis for the new film.

Audiences haven’t seen much of the multi-talented Ryan lately. She did pop up in her directorial debut “Ithaca,” a poorly reviewed 2015 adaptation of William Saroyan’s “The Human Comedy” with Tom Hanks (Ryan’s co-star in “Seattle” and “Mail”) and Ryan’s son Jack Quaid.

Her previous rom-com role, though, came over a decade before, in 2009’s “Serious Moonlight” opposite Timothy Hutton.

So where the heck has she been?

Ryan says she decided to take a break to focus on other aspects of her life. It’s an approach she feels makes for a healthier involvement in show business.

“It’s nice to think of (acting) as a job and not a lifestyle,” as she told People magazine. “And that is a great way of navigating it for me.”

Now with her return to the genre, Ryan dedicates “What Happens Later” to the late Ephron, the iconic writer and filmmaker who helped turn her into a star. Ephron died in 2012.

The new film is an R-rated release that pivots on two people who were college sweethearts — the worrywart Bill (“The X-Files’” David Duchovny) and the more live-in-the-magical-moment Willa (Ryan) — who reunite decades later when they get stranded for one night in a snowed-in airport, reliving their pasts and enduring cheesy airport-friendly covers of classic songs.

It opens Friday in area theaters.

In an interview with both stars (who received an interim agreement from SAG-AFTRA to promote the film despite the actors strike), Ryan recalled what was so special about working with Ephron.

“It was really fun to be on her set,” Ryan recalls. “She was delighted to be a storyteller. It delighted her… . She would laugh to herself and hide her face and just wouldn’t be able to believe certain things were going on, on the things that she directed. Or that the movies she wrote…she just couldn’t believe that they came to life. They were in her imagination one morning and now they’re here with the whole crew having opinions.”

Her costar, also known for starring in the Showtime comedy “Californication” for several years, has pulled back from acting jobs of late as he focuses on his writing career, having published five novels.

But Duchovny has found his comeback working with Ryan the actor — who is “the best ever at this particular genre,” he says — and Ryan the filmmaker to be a joyful experience. But that didn’t mean they just horsed around and didn’t take what they were doing to heart.

“We get paid to play around,” Duchovny said. “You know, make believe. You can go on one side and say well that’s a stupid way to live your life. But we play seriously. The other part is you’ve got to take playing seriously. Like that’s an oxymoron. It doesn’t really make sense. But Meg’s own vibe, her personality is seriously playful. And that was perfect for this area.”

What needed to seriously work onscreen was the kinetic chemistry between the two stars. Given that Duchovny gets so often associated with his darker, mostly unromantic role of FBI agent Fox Mulder on the influential “The X-Files” series (although the relationship between Mulder and and FBI partner, Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully, did turn romantic at times), he wouldn’t seem to be the obvious choice.

“It was like a leap of faith for Meg,” he said.

Ryan, though, dismisses that and said she was impressed by Duchovny, who indeed demonstrated his range in “Californication” for seven seasons. During their Zoom rehearsals prior to shooting in two locations in Bentonville, Arkansas, — the Northwest Arkansas National Airport and the Crystal Bridges art museum — an undeniable connection became event.

Since the bulk of the film rests entirely on their shoulders, it was essential those sparks flew when the cameras rolled.

“We just really had to be partners,” Ryan said. “We just had to be.”

“I guess it didn’t have to work,” Duchovny adds.

“It didn’t have to work,” Ryan agrees. “We’re just lucky it did.”

It’s that fluid banter between the two that clicks not only on the screen but during their promotional appearances, including stints on the talk show circuit.

Duchovny has appeared in romantic-themed films before, including 2000’s “Return to Me” with Minnie Driver, and has been a fan of rom-coms. But for the most part, he says, “There was a time when I wanted to kind of exist in that world but the opportunity wasn’t really there.”

So “it was a dream come true” when he landed the part opposite Ryan.

Given that they enjoyed working together and respect each other, would they want to did it again? Their response shows the kind in-sync timing that suggests it’s a real possibility.

“I would do a movie with Meg every year if I could,” Duchovny says.

“I would do the same,” Ryan concurs, without missing a beat.

We’ll just have to see what happens later.

Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.