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Fallout continues a year after Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riots

Los Angeles hockey fans didn't tear up the City of Angels on Monday night when the Kings beat the New Jersey Devils 6-1 to clinch the Stanley Cup.

The LAPD was ready for trouble, with scores of riot-equipped cops in the streets an hour after the game. But police reported only a handful of minor disturbances and one commander told The Associated Press hockey fans were "very, very cordial."

What a contrast with that city further up the Pacific Coast where not quite one year ago the streets were filled with rioting young men and women and the unpleasant tang of tear gas.

The riot after the Vancouver Canucks lost Game 7 of the cup final to the Boston Bruins last June 15 caused millions of dollars in damage to downtown businesses.

A year after the Vancouver Winter Olympics love-in, the city suffered a black eye. The day after, chagrined residents swarmed downtown to help with the cleanup and wrote apologetic messages on plywood covering broken storefronts.

A timeline compiled by the Vancouver Sun illustrates what many said at the time, that family-friendly atmosphere of earlier games in the series was absent that evening, well before the final whistle.

But perhaps the most enduring image of that night is one of love: Photojournalist Rich Lam's now iconic shot of a young couple lying in the street between riot cops and rioters, apparently kissing.

Australian Scott Jones and his Vancouver girlfriend Alexandra Thomas weren't 'necking' when Lam, working that night for Getty Images, snapped the famous shot. They'd been headed for a nearby transit station when they were knocked down by a line of riot police charging a nearby crowd. Jones was comforting his companion.

"It was a pretty frantic moment; Alex was just on the ground," Jones told the Vancouver Sun from Melbourne, Australian, where the couple now lives. "She didn't want to move.

"I think it's funny how everybody thinks it's so romantic and that sort of thing — it really wasn't. It was just a kiss to calm her down and it was captured in that second."

The shot, hailed as one of the best news photos of 2011, brought the couple a brief moment of fame, including an appearance on Jay Leno's Tonight Show.

The fallout wasn't as pleasant for others who were on the streets that night.

A much-criticized methodical police investigation has resulted in charges approved against almost 100 people, with more expected. Police have recommended some 500 charges against 200 individuals. A dozen have already pleaded guilty and a couple have been jailed.

There was a sign this week the courts may deal harshly with many of the rioters.

Twenty-year-old Emmanuel Alviar was sentenced Monday to a month in jail despite having no previous criminal record.

Defence lawyer Gary Botting had asked for house arrest for Alviar, who'd turned himself in, pleaded guilty to rocking a vandalized car and trying unsuccessfully to break a store window, apologized and expressed remorse.

The Crown wanted four months but spokeswoman Samantha Hume called the sentence, which includes 150 hours of community service, appropriate.

"It's at the low end of the range but it does send the message of denunciation and deterrence," she told CBC News.

Botting said the jail term, even if Alviar doesn't serve all of it, could deter others from turning themselves in.

There was a lot of finger-pointing after the riot, with the police and city officials criticized for being unprepared for the size of the crowd, allowing open liquor and reacting too slowly when things deteriorated.

Some felt the physical effects of the riot for months afterward. Several people were injured trying to protect storefronts from looters and vandals, and police officers were hurt.

[Related: Stanley Cup riot tested hospital's disaster plan]

Const. Erik Kerasiotis suffered a concussion when he was hit in the neck by a baseball-sized rock. He was off work for three weeks and plagued by a non-stop headache for six months. But it could have been worse.

"If I had turned a little this way, I would have caught it in the throat and it probably would have killed me," he told CBC News.

No one was ever charged.