Shooting, fires too close to home
LOS ANGELES— The fires didn’t reach the home of Trevor Moore’s family in Thousand Oaks, Calif. But a fire did break out nearby on Monday, the day he visited his parents, and the day before he was recalled but didn’t play for the Toronto Maple Leafs. However, the fire was beaten back. Good day. “I mean, we were pretty lucky. Where we are, there could be a lot of fires around there with the layout, but they’ve been safe,” said Moore, a 23year-old undrafted college free agent who led the Toronto Marlies with nine goals and 12 points this season before flying to L.A. to take an extra-long morning skate and sit in the press box.
“I’m glad I was able to get back here and see my family. It just makes you realize how important that is. It’s a hard few days for sure around here, and I just hope everyone’s OK.”
More than a lot of places, that’s Thousand Oaks right now. Moore was born and raised in the city of 123,000 just north of Los Angeles. The Woolsey Fire, which has grown to nearly 100,000 acres, has largely snaked around the edge of the town without consuming it. Moore says he was lucky: his parents are OK, his immediate friends aren’t affected.
He checked on old acquaintances on Snapchat and they weren’t as fortunate: “People that you knew from back home, their houses are gone, right?” He was watching the news with his parents and saw someone they knew who said he fought off a fire near his house with a garden hose.
“Yeah, I mean fire seasons were a time of the year. I mean, I don’t remember one this bad, especially up north. It’s something that we were used to, but not like this.”
The shooting was the same. It was a week ago that a former Marine walked into the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks with a legal gun and threw some smoke bombs and opened fire, killing 12 before shooting himself. Moore knew the bar, but not the people inside.
“That was a bar that I had gone to a couple times, especially college night in the summers and stuff,” Moore said. “So myself and my sisters had been there. So you never know, right? We weren’t there that night, but it’s just, it’s so hard. Just terrible. … I mean, I grew up in Thousand Oaks, it was a safe community that you could kind of go anywhere. I loved growing up in Thousand Oaks. I could raise a family there for sure. It’s sad to see this happen.”
Moore was lucky. The fires and the shootings were near, but not too close.
For the Los Angeles Kings, there was a closer tie. As Lisa Dillman of the Athletic reported, a 22-year-old named Chrissy Duarte had just started with the Kings when she was gunned down in the Las Vegas massacre of 2017, when a man with a pile of modified assault rifles killed 58 on the Vegas strip.
One man who survived that shooting died in the Borderline Bar and Grill. Another man survived both attacks. The Kings held up placards that read ENOUGH before their game last week against the Minnesota Wild, and both teams wore a similar sticker on their helmets. The team and players donated money, too.
“Yeah, well, we’ve got to step up for these types of things,” said Kings defenceman Drew Doughty. “You know, like our campaign says, enough is enough; we can’t be having this stuff in this world.”
It was pointed out politics doesn’t often intersect with hockey, and Doughty agreed.
“Yeah, I guess not that much, but when there’s something, that big of a travesty, you’ve got to step up and say something. No matter what you’re doing in life, you’ve got to step up and make awareness to it.”
It’s true that hockey has usually avoided politics. In the NBA, the Golden State Warriors didn’t go to the Trump White House after winning championships, and the Philadelphia Eagles saw many defections on their day. In the NHL, like baseball, the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals didn’t see much of an issue, for the most part. The NFL and NBA have seen players — and in the NBA’s case, coaches and executives — talk about the issues facing America, vocally and with feeling.
The NHL? There are a lot of white Canadians and Europeans in a league that is never truly sure of how popular it is, and might remain. So hockey keeps to itself on politics, for the most part.
But sometimes the world comes to your door whether you want to answer or not. Roberto Luongo has spoken out extensively after the Parkland school shooting earlier this year; he drives past that school every day to work. The Vegas Golden Knights assumed a community-focused role in the aftermath of the shootings there. The Kings are still figuring out what an antiviolence campaign looks like, but they want to help. Sometimes you get near-misses. Sometimes you don’t.
On Tuesday it was clear and beautiful in Southern California, a place full of good luck and bad luck and the worst luck, full of near-misses and moments of silence. The smoke rose to the north like a mushroom cloud, and there was a new fire near Thousand Oaks and some more evacuations. You could buy ENOUGH T-shirts in the Kings gift shop.
And in the rink the Leafs played L.A., Moore was an extra forward who wasn’t in the lineup, because hometown boys aren’t a part of Mike Babcock’s playbook, no sir.
But he was lucky anyway.