// a href = ./ //

LOS ANGELES (AP) - When Bryan Bickell's shot slipped out of Jonathan Quick's usually inescapable glove and trickled into the Los Angeles net early, the Chicago Blackhawks figured Game 4 might be their chance to snap the Kings' daunting streak of home dominance.

When Marian Hossa's shot eluded Quick for the go-ahead goal two periods later, the Blackhawks knew they had cracked their foe's star goalie and the formula for winning at Staples Center.

The Kings are teetering in the Western Conference finals - and Chicago needs just one more win to topple the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Hossa scored the tiebreaking goal early in the third period, and the Blackhawks moved to the brink of the Stanley Cup finals with a 3-2 victory Thursday night, ending Los Angeles' 15-game winning streak at home.

"They were playing so well at home, and to finally break that streak, we're happy about it," Hossa said. "We knew about it. We talked about it before the game. We were hoping to break it, and we got it."

Corey Crawford made 19 saves, and Patrick Kane tapped in the tying goal as Chicago rallied from a second-period deficit to beat the Kings. Los Angeles hadn't lost in its rink since March 23, including eight playoff games. Bickell had a goal and an assist for the top-seeded Blackhawks, who took a 3-1 series lead even without suspended defenseman Duncan Keith.

After losing Game 3 in listless fashion, the Blackhawks had a solution to every dilemma, from the Kings' two early leads to the absence of Chicago's ice-time leader and top defenseman.

"We knew our defense was going to step up, and they did," Bickell said. "We had a good feeling coming in. We had a bitter taste from the last game. They had a big start, but we stuck with it and eventually got it back."

Game 5 is Saturday night in Chicago.

Slava Voynov and Dustin Penner scored for the Kings, who had the NHL's longest home postseason winning run since 2009. The champs know they are in trouble after failing to hold on to a late lead in front of their Conn Smythe Trophy-winning goalie.

"It's an incredibly skilled team," Kings defenseman Rob Scuderi said of Chicago. "We're not getting into something we didn't know. When you turn the puck over like that at the blue lines, with the skill they have, it's only a matter of time before they put one on the scoreboard. Hopefully we learned our lesson, and we've got to win the next one."

The Blackhawks thrived without Keith, who served a one-game suspension for high-sticking Jeff Carter in the face during the second period of Game 3. Sheldon Brookbank filled in while Chicago played strong team defense in front of Crawford, allowing just two shots by the desperate Kings in the third period.

"Right from the first couple shifts, we were moving our feet, playing with speed," said defenseman Brent Seabrook, who led Chicago with 26:20 of ice time. "We were getting in on the forecheck and making good plays. It was big for our group to come back with a good effort."

Los Angeles hadn't lost a playoff game at home since Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals last season, winning nine straight overall. The Kings also had been outstanding when playing with a lead in front of Quick, who stopped 25 shots, but Los Angeles uncharacteristically surrendered that 2-1 lead late in the second period.

The high-scoring Kane ending his seven-game goal drought in a quiet postseason by charging into the crease to tap home the tying goal on a rebound of Niklas Hjalmarsson's shot and Bickell's deflection late in the second period. Hjalmarsson finished with two assists.

After Los Angeles killed a penalty to open the third period, Michal Handzus caught the Kings napping and set up a break with the speedy Hossa, who ripped a precise shot for his seventh goal of the postseason.

"That's one thing that (coach) Darryl (Sutter) has been hard on us for right now," Kings defenseman Drew Doughty said. "We're making too many turnovers, in the neutral zone especially. That was a cause of two of the goals. We made turnovers and they came back down on odd-man rushes and scored. If we want to win, it's something we can't be doing."

The Kings played their third straight game without center Mike Richards, who has an apparent concussion after a big hit from Chicago's Dave Bolland in the series opener. Richards was the Kings' leading postseason scorer with 10 points when he got hurt.

Los Angeles' unbeaten stretch at home ended in unusual fashion with the blown lead, and the low-scoring Kings' title defense could be over in two days. The NHL hasn't had a repeat champion since the Detroit Red Wings in 1998, and Los Angeles has managed just eight goals in four games against the powerful Blackhawks.

"They didn't have many great scoring chances," Crawford said. "We mostly kept them to the outside. It was great for us to shut them down."

Chicago needs one win in three games to advance to its second Stanley Cup finals appearance since 1992. The Blackhawks have been mostly rolling since their 5-2 victory in the season opener at Los Angeles in January, ruining the Kings' banner-raising ceremony.

The Blackhawks hadn't won a playoff round in the past two seasons since their Stanley Cup triumph, replenishing their roster on the fly around their talented young core.

Just nine players remain from the championship team, but it's safe to say the rebuild is complete for a team that won its second Presidents' Trophy with a 36-7-5 regular season, followed by a gutsy rally from a 1-3 series deficit against Detroit to escape the second round.

The Kings opened Game 4 with the same urgency they showed two days earlier, forcing their way into Chicago's zone and preventing the Blackhawks' usual slick passing. Los Angeles' fourth line created the first goal just 3:28 in when Kyle Clifford passed from behind Chicago's net to Voynov, who skated in alone for a slap shot past Crawford.

The goal was Voynov's sixth of the postseason, extending his single-season playoff record for Kings defensemen.

Chicago responded, easily killing a penalty while holding Los Angeles without a shot for about 11 minutes. The Blackhawks evened it on an innocent-looking play by Bickell, whose wobbly shot somehow got out of Quick's glove for his eighth goal of the postseason.

Bickell is on a remarkable playoff run before unrestricted free agency this summer, scoring a goal in each of the past three games and five of seven overall.

The Kings went back ahead early in the second period on another strong shift by their newly assembled big line featuring Carter, Penner and rookie Tyler Toffoli, who has taken Richards' place in the lineup. They also victimized the Blackhawks' third defensive pairing: Carter drove the net while Chicago's Nick Leddy failed to knock him off the puck, and Penner swept home the rebound of Carter's backhand when Brookbank couldn't move him out of the crease.

Chicago tied it late in the period when Hjalmarsson launched a long shot through Bickell's screen and past Quick. Kane tapped it home for a much-needed boost for the prolific scorer who had managed just two goals in the playoffs after getting 23 in the regular season.

After Hossa scored his second goal of the series, Quick made an exceptional glove save on Kane later in the third period. But Quick and the Kings have yielded 10 goals in the series - the same number they gave up in six first-round games and seven second-round games.

"It's a loss. They're all the same," Quick said. "We've just got to win one game. That's all we've got to do."

NOTES: The Kings lost at home in regulation just four times in the regular season. ... Brookbank played only 6:50 and was a minus-2, but coach Joel Quenneville praised his work. ... Los Angeles captain Dustin Brown has one goal in the last nine games, none in the conference finals. Top scorer Anze Kopitar has one goal in 13 games, also none in this series. Brown and Kopitar tied for the NHL playoff scoring lead last season with 20 points apiece.

MIAMI (AP) - One by one, Tony Parker was confronted by Miami's Big Three, surrounded even as the shot clock ticked toward zero and his San Antonio Spurs clung to a two-point lead.

And just when Parker appeared to have nowhere to go, when everything was going wrong for the speedy French point guard, he did what he's done these entire playoffs, and his entire career for that matter. He found a way.

Parker's leaning, twisting, step-through bank shot with 5.2 seconds left lifted the Spurs to a 92-88 victory over the Heat in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night, a massive first step toward the franchise's fifth championship.

"It was a crazy play," said Parker, who finished with 21 points and six assists. "I thought I lost the ball three or four times. And it didn't work out like I wanted it to. At the end, I was just trying to get a shot up. It felt good when it left my hand. I was happy it went in."

The shot punctuated a triumphant return to the finals for the Spurs, who haven't been here since 2007. Capturing title No. 5 may be the most difficult task yet for these ageless Spurs, who handed the star-studded Heat just their fifth loss at home this season.

James and the Heat had slashed a seven-point, fourth-quarter deficit to two with 30 seconds remaining, and that's when Parker pulled out practically every trick in a bag stuffed full of them over a 12-year career to clinch Game 1.

The 31-year-old engine of the Spurs was face-to-face with Chris Bosh after a screen near the top of the key to start the possession. Parker immediately scooted past him to the right, leaving one Heat All-Star in the dust. He then avoided a swipe at the ball from Dwyane Wade as he headed toward the baseline.

Nice try, All-Star No. 2.

When he got close to the baseline, Parker was met by James, the reigning MVP. He lost the handle when James came to help, but was able to pull the ball back in and maintain possession as he turned his back to the basket and frantically searched for space.

When Parker tried to turn the corner on James and face the basket, he slipped and fell down to his knee, the precious seconds on the shot clock disappearing far too slowly for Heat coach Erik Spoelstra's liking.

"That seemed like a 26-second possession," Spoelstra said. "But we played it all the way through. That's probably what this series is about. It's going to go down to the last tenth of a second. Every single play you have to push through all the way to the end, and we didn't."

And Parker did.

"It seemed like forever, too," he said.

Somehow he gathered himself, stood up, pivoted twice and stepped through an outstretched James' arm. He let the shot fly a split-second before the shot-clock buzzer went off and the ball hit high off the glass, bounced twice on the rim and dropped through the net.

Au revoir, All-Star No. 3.

"Tony did everything wrong and did everything right in the same possession," James said. "He stumbled two or three times. He fell over. And when he fell over, I was like, 'OK, I'm going to have to tie this ball up. ... That was the longest 24 seconds that I've been a part of."

Just the way coach Gregg Popovich drew it up.

"We were very fortunate," Popovich said. "It looked like he lost it two or three times. But he stuck with it. He kept competing. He gained control of it again. He got it up there on the rim. Great effort by Tony, and as I said, we were fortunate."

In some ways, that play represented the entirety of the Spurs' effort in Game 1. The Heat led for most of the first three quarters, shooting 50 percent from the field and threatening to blow the game open on several occasions. But Parker, Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili have all been here before.

They didn't get rattled by the white-clad crowd's roar. They didn't back down when James and Wade barreled toward the rim. They kept their cool, remained focused and never lost hope, even when it seemed to be evaporating all around them.

As Parker dropped to one knee on San Antonio's final possession, Duncan said he had no idea what to think. The seconds were disappearing and James and the Heat were charging, and all Duncan could do was hope his unflappable teammate would find a way.

"I see him go down and I'm just praying he gets a shot off," said Duncan, who had 20 points, 14 rebounds and three blocks. "Obviously, Tony makes an unbelievable play. He does just about everything in the book that he had. He fell to the ground, pump-faked, stepped through, and still got it off the ground. It was just amazing."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is secretly collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, according to the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Obama administration is defending the National Security Agency's need to collect such records, but critics are calling it a huge over-reach.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told reporters Thursday that the court order for telephone records, first disclosed by The Guardian newspaper in Britain, was a three-month renewal of an ongoing practice. The records have been collected for some seven years, according to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

"I think people want the homeland kept safe to the extent we can," Feinstein said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "We want to protect these privacy rights. That's why this is carefully done in federal court with federal judges who sit 24/7 who review these requests."

The disclosure raised a number of questions: What is the government looking for? Are other big telephone companies under similar orders to turn over information? How is the information used and how long are the records kept?

The sweeping roundup of U.S. phone records has been going on for years and was a key part of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program, according to a U.S. official.

The White House had no immediate on-the-record comment. Attorney General Eric Holder sidestepped questions about the issue during an appearance before a Senate subcommittee, offering instead to discuss it at a classified session that several senators said they would arrange.

The order was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19, the Guardian reported. It requires Verizon, one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies, on an "ongoing, daily basis," to give the NSA information on all landline and mobile telephone calls of Verizon Business in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration, the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk, regardless of whether the people are suspected of any wrongdoing.

A former U.S. intelligence official who is familiar with the NSA program said that records from all U.S. phone companies would be seized by the government under the warrants, and that they would include business and residential numbers.

Reaction to the revelation — both pro and con — reflected the vigorous debate in Washington over how best to balance the sometimes-competing goals of protecting the nation from terror attacks while safeguarding the privacy and civil rights of Americans. President Barack Obama, in a recent national security address, said the nation is at a crossroads as it determines how to remain vigilant yet move beyond a post-9/11 mindset focused on global antiterrorism.

Former Vice President Al Gore tweeted that privacy was essential in the digital era.

"Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?" wrote Gore, the Democrat who lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush.

Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent whose comments were echoed by members of both parties, said: "To simply say in a blanket way that millions and millions of Americans are going to have their phone records checked by the U.S. government is to my mind indefensible and unacceptable."

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he had no problem with the court order and the practice, declaring, "If we don't do it, we're crazy."

"If you're not getting a call from a terrorist organization, you've got nothing to worry about," he said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, who ran against Obama for president in 2008, said that if the records sweep was designed to track "people in the United States who are communicating with members of jihadist terrorist organizations," that might not be a problem. "But if it was something where we just blanket started finding out who everybody called and under what circumstances, then I think it deserves congressional hearings."

Senate Democratic leader Reid played down the significance of the revelation.

"Right now I think that everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn't anything that's brand new," he said. "This is a program that's been in effect for seven years, as I recall. It's a program that has worked to prevent not all terrorism but certainly the vast, vast majority. Now is the program perfect? Of course not."

The disclosure of the records sweep was just the latest controversy to hit the Obama administration.

The president also is facing questions over the Internal Revenue Service's improper targeting of conservative groups, the seizure of journalist phone records in an investigation into who leaked information to the media, and the administration's handling of the terrorist attack in Libya that left four Americans dead.

At the very least, the controversies threaten to distract the White House at a pivotal time, when the president wants to tackle big issues like immigration reform and taxes. At most, the controversies collectively could erode the American people's trust in him, threatening both to derail his second term agenda and sully his presidential legacy.

The court order did not authorize snooping into the content of phone calls. But with millions of phone records in hand, the NSA's computers can analyze them for patterns, spot unusual behavior and identify what are known in intelligence circles as "communities of interest" — networks of people in contact with targets or suspicious phone numbers overseas.

Once the government has zeroed in on numbers it believes are tied to terrorism or foreign governments, it can go back to the court with a wiretap request. That allows the government to monitor the calls in real time, record them and store them indefinitely.

The court document related to Verizon offers a glimpse into the larger NSA effort. Under the law, the government would need to demand records from each phone company individually. While subpoenas for other phone companies have not been made public, for the data-mining program described by government officials to work, the government would need records for all providers.

"There is no indication that this order to Verizon was unique or novel. It is very likely that business records orders like this exist for every major American telecommunication company, meaning that if you make calls in the United States the NSA has those records. And this has been going on for at least 7 years, and probably longer," wrote Cindy Cohn, general counsel of the nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, and staff attorney Mark Rumold, in a blog post.

Jim Harper, a communications and privacy expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, questioned the effectiveness of using so-called pattern analyses to intercept terrorism. He said that kind of analysis — finding trends in transactional data collected by Verizon — would produce many false positives and give the government access to intricate data about people's calling habits.

"This is not just entertainment or a sideshow. This is a record of who you called every day this month," he said, urging Congress to require the government to provide "a full explanation" of how this data turns up terrorism plots.

Under Bush, the National Security Agency built a highly classified wiretapping program to monitor emails and phone calls worldwide. The full details of that program remain unknown, but one aspect was to monitor massive numbers of incoming and outgoing U.S. calls to look for suspicious patterns, said an official familiar with the program. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

After The New York Times revealed the existence of that wiretapping program, the roundup continued under authority granted in the USA Patriot Act, the official said.

The official did not know if the program was continuous or whether it stopped and restarted at times.

The official had not seen the court order released by the Guardian newspaper but said it was consistent with similar authorizations the Justice Department has received.

Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden said Wednesday the company had no comment.

The NSA had no immediate comment. The agency is sensitive to perceptions that it might be spying on Americans. In a brochure it distributes, which includes a DVD for reporters to view video that it provides for public relations purposes, it pledges that the agency "is unwavering in its respect for U.S. laws and Americans' civil liberties — and its commitment to accountability," and says, "Earning the American public's trust is paramount."

Verizon Communications Inc. listed 121 million customers in its first-quarter earnings report this April — 98.9 million wireless customers, 11.7 million residential phone lines and about 10 million commercial lines. The court order didn't specify which customers' records were being tracked.

Under the terms of the order, the phone numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as are call time and duration, and unique identifiers. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered, The Guardian said.

A senior administration official, defending the collection of phone records by the government, said, "On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Interviewed separately, the former intelligence official described a system in which the database needed to be kept current so that if intelligence agencies obtained a phone number from a terror suspect overseas, it could immediately be matched against the records on file. Because it is not easy or quick to obtain the records from phone companies, the Obama administration needed to renew the Bush-era program on an ongoing basis to keep it updated, the former official said.

It's not clear how long the records are kept, or if they are destroyed. The former official said that since terror suspects frequently change phone numbers to cover their tracks, there is little need for older records.

Congressional intelligence agencies were briefed extensively on the program, and received support from both Republicans and Democrats to continue it, the former official said. "Some were nervous about it, but there was never any attempt to stop the program," he said. He described it as a White House-led process.

The broad, unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is unusual. FISA court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. NSA warrantless wiretapping during the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks was very controversial.

The FISA court order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon to provide the NSA with electronic copies of "all call detail records or telephony metadata created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls," The Guardian said.

The law on which the order explicitly relies is the "business records" provision of the USA Patriot Act.

___ Associated Press writers Adam Goldman, Julie Pace, Lara Jakes, David Espo and Jack Gillum contributed to this report.