Pavelski leads Sharks to 2-1 win over Kings, 2-0 series lead

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Captain Joe Pavelski scored his third goal in two games, Martin Jones made 27 saves and the San Jose Sharks took a 2-0 series lead on the Los Angeles Kings with a 2-1 victory in Game 2 on Saturday night.

Logan Couture also scored for the Sharks, who largely dominated their California rivals in their second straight road victory.

Jones made several key stops against his former Los Angeles teammates and hung on after losing his shutout bid on Vincent Lecavalier's power-play goal with 5:01 to play.

Jonathan Quick stopped 21 shots while losing to his former backup again.

Neither team has forgotten the Kings lost the first three games of their first-round series with San Jose in 2014, only to win four straight.

Game 3 is Monday night at the Shark Tank.

This is familiar territory: The Sharks went up 3-0 on Los Angeles in the first round in 2014, only to become the fourth team in NHL history to blow that lead when the Kings roared back.

While the Sharks' core is largely the same, the addition of several complementary players and coach Peter DeBoer suggest things could be different this year.

The Sharks led the NHL with 28 road victories this season, and they've snagged two more at Staples Center. But now they've got to go back to San Jose, where they were a sub-.500 team.

Pavelski was dominant in the series opener, scoring on the Sharks' first shot before adding the go-ahead goal early in the third period. He scored on the Sharks' first shot again in Game 2, slipping it through traffic past Quick, his U.S. Olympic teammate.

When Los Angeles took simultaneous penalties in the second period, Couture scored during 5-on-3 play after Quick got far out of position.

The Kings struggled for offense despite a boost from the return of Marian Gaborik, who missed the past two months with a knee injury. Top goal-scorer Tyler Toffoli was shut out again, and top scorer Anze Kopitar made little impact as the Sharks largely confined the Kings to the perimeter of the ice.

Lecavalier finally ended the Kings' 77:41 scoreless stretch with a rebound goal, but they couldn't equalize with Quick pulled in the final seconds.

Gaborik had missed 29 straight games since Feb. 12, but he returned to the Kings' starting lineup for Game 2. The Slovak scorer had a phenomenal postseason in 2014, contributing 14 goals on the way to his first Stanley Cup title.

NOTES: Kings D Alec Martinez missed another game with an injury, and Jamie McBain made his playoff debut. ... Pavelski has seven goals in his past seven games against Los Angeles. ... Drew Doughty played 28:52 for the Kings.

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Stocks rise ahead of company earnings reports

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Asian stock markets mostly gained on Tuesday as investors awaited corporate earnings results at home and abroad.

KEEPING SCORE: Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 1.2 percent to 15,937.80 and South Korea's Kospi added 0.3 percent to 1,976.40, a day before South Koreans elect 300 new lawmakers to parliament. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index edged 0.2 percent higher to 20,491.02 and Australia's S&X/ASX 200 added 0.6 percent to 4,961.80. But China's Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.7 percent to 3,013.60. Stocks in Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines advanced.

ANALYST'S TAKE: "U.S. company reporting is a key factor this week," said Michael McCarthy of CMC Markets, noting Monday's report by aluminum mining giant Alcoa's better than expected first-quarter earnings. While some bemoan the "jobless recovery" and weaker revenues, "In the meantime, investors who are not subscribers to the 'perfect world' theory of markets got on with buying Alcoa," he said in a commentary.

EARNINGS: Apart from Alcoa, later this week big U.S. banks will start releasing results, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, though expectations are low for this earnings season. In Asia, Samsung Electronics gave an earnings preview that surpassed expectations last week and results of other major companies are due in coming weeks.

WALL STREET: Wall Street ended Monday generally flat as investors awaited first-quarter company earnings. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 0.1 percent to 17,556.41. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 0.3 percent to 2,041.99 and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.4 percent to 4,833.40.

OIL: Benchmark U.S. crude oil lost 9 cents to $40.27 per barrel. The contract rose 64 cents to close at $40.36 a barrel on Monday. Brent crude, the international benchmark, lost 10 cents to $42.73 a barrel in London.

CURRENCIES: The yen rose to 108.18 yen from 107.89 yen while the euro fell slightly to $1.1406 from $1.1413.

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Fujimori leads Peru election first round, heads to runoff

LIMA, Peru (AP) - The daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori held a strong lead in preliminary results from the first round of Peru's presidential election and appeared headed to a showdown with another center-right candidate in a June runoff.

With 40 percent of the ballots counted late Sunday, Fujimori had 39 percent of the vote, while former World Bank economist Pedro Kuczynski held 24 percent. Leftist congresswoman Veronika Mendoza, who had made a late surge in pre-election polls, was in third at 17 percent.

Final results were not expected until sometime Monday, but Kuczynski's supporters celebrated in the streets outside his campaign headquarters in Lima after two unofficial quick counts indicated he would edge out Mendoza for the right to face Fujimori on June 5. Such counts have been reliable predictors of results in previous Peruvian elections.

The center-right Fujimori was the runaway front-runner for months and looked poised to outdo even the most-optimistic first round scenarios in polls published on the eve of voting.

But she will face an uphill battle in the second round because of how polarizing a figure former President Fujimori remains among Peruvians.

While her father is remembered fondly by many, especially in the long-overlooked countryside, for defeating Maoist-inspired Shining Path rebels and taming hyperinflation, he is detested by large segments of the urban middle class for human rights abuses and his order for the military to shut down Congress. Almost half of Peruvians surveyed said they would never vote for anyone associated with the former leader and thousands took to the streets a week ago to warn that Keiko Fujimori's election could bring back authoritarian rule.

In a bid to project a more moderate image, Fujimori promised during her campaign not to pardon her father, who is serving out a 25-year sentence for authorizing death squads during his decade-long rule starting in 1990. On Sunday night, she told supporters it was time to bury the past.

"Peruvians want reconciliation and don't want to fight anymore," she told supporters while standing on a truck parked outside a luxury Lima hotel.

If Kuczynski holds on to the No. 2 spot, it will ensure Peru continues along a free-market path after Mendoza's rise in the polls spooked investors. It also represents another setback for South America's left, which after sweeping into power across much of the region during the past decade's commodities boom has suffered a string of electoral losses in Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela.

After finishing a strong third in the 2011 election, Kuczynski threw his support behind Keiko Fujimori in that year's runoff. He later said he regretted that decision but considered it necessary in trying to prevent the election of leftist Ollanta Humala, who held close ties to socialist Venezuela and had led an army rebellion in his youth. Once in office, however, Humala kept up a pro-business policy framework. The constitution barred him from seeking a second, consecutive term.

Kuczynski, 77, is now urging Peruvians to turn the page on the widespread corruption and human rights violations associated with the Alberto Fujimori years. But with an elite pedigree, heavily accented Spanish and until recently a U.S. passport, he may face a hard time connecting with regular Peruvians, especially in rural areas where the older Fujimori is still revered.

Sunday's elections were marred by the worst guerrilla attack in Humala's presidency. On Saturday, Shining Path rebels killed eight soldiers and two civilians as they were traveling in a caravan to a remote village to provide security during the vote.

Maritza Sacsara, one of the many rural voters who cast votes for Fujimori, called her "a born leader" and credited the candidate with campaigning fiercely in small towns and villages often ignored by Peruvian politicians.

Fujimori's Popular Force party secured an estimated 60 seats in the 130-member congress, while five other parties split the remaining seats.

Sunday's elections provided notable defeats for traditional politicians. Two former presidents, Alejandro Toledo and Alan Garcia, finished near the bottom of the 10-candidate field, while the congressional slate for Garcia's almost century-old APRA party barely got by the minimum 5 percent threshold to hold onto its legal standing.

Adding bitterness to the race, two candidates, including Fujimori's strongest rival, were barred from the race by Peru's electoral tribunal for campaign violations or technicalities, decisions questioned by the Organization of American States.

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Associated Press writers Rodrigo Abd in Peru's Ayacucho region and Joshua Goodman in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.

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Franklin Briceno on Twitter at https://twitter.com/franklinbriceno. His work can be found at: http://bigstory.ap.org/author/franklin-briceno .

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