Rangers continue mastery of Flyers

NEW YORK - On his knees behind the net, Marian Gaborik appeared to be down for the count after getting crushed by Andrej Meszaros with 16 seconds left in the second period.

Somehow, Gaborik mustered the strength to get up and take a weak backhander that amazingly dribbled through Ilya Bryzgalov's pads with 5.1 seconds remaining.

"It was a horse [bleep] goal," Rangers coach John Tortorella admitted.

And that's exactly how you would characterize the Flyers' miserable weekend, which they entered with a chance to overtake the Rangers for the top spot in the Eastern Conference.

But if you just read Tortorella's quote without any context, it would have been impossible to tell whether he was talking about Gaborik's goal or the one Michael Del Zotto fluttered past Bryzgalov just 36 seconds after the Flyers repaid their debt in the first minute of the next period.

Suddenly, the Flyers are looking like Gaborik did after that hit: down for the count against the Rangers. Del Zotto's squeaker propelled the Rangers to a convincing 5-2 victory over the Flyers, which served as an afternoon appetizer to New York's Super Bowl Sunday.

It was the Flyers' sixth straight loss to the Rangers and their fourth this season. They've been outscored, 24-8, in the six games.

"I think everyone looked at the standings before the weekend, knowing if we went 2-for-2 that we'd be at the top of the conference," Scott Hartnell said. "After the [first] 40 minutes we played on Saturday and the disappointing ending today, it's definitely frustrating."

The "rivalry" word was thrown about quite a bit in the Flyers' locker room after the game, one that featured four fights, plenty of bruising hits and at least a pint of blood lost.

Wins, not fights, fuel rivalries.

"It hurts worse," Hartnell said of the punches. "You don't feel as much pain when you win the game."

"They have four wins and we have none," Wayne Simmonds said. "There's not much else you can say about that. We're upset that we haven't beaten them this year."

Yesterday, it came down to the goaltending, as it has so often for the Flyers this season. On two occasions, the Flyers clawed back from one-goal deficits, only to have the Rangers retake the lead with a soft goal. After Del Zotto's goal, the Rangers iced the game with a wrister by Brandon Dubinsky and an empty-netter by Ruslan Fedotenko.