Rangers Watch: PHI 6, NYR 2

Oy, it just gets worse.

The Rangers came played a strong first period, on the back of two goals by Ryan Hollweg (that makes five in 173 career GP for the plugger). Then the slide started. During a penalty kill, Chris Drury threw his stick to the defenseless Dan Girardi. That's a no-no:

Rule 45(c): A player who has lost or broken his stick may only receive a stick at his own players' bench or be handed one from a teammate on the ice. A minor penalty shall be imposed for an infraction of this Rule.

And so the Flyers started the second period with a 5-on-3 advantage. Philadelphia quickly scored their a goal, the first of six unanswered goals which also included a natural hat trick for Scott Hartnell.

Henrik Lundqvist has been a bit shaky of late, letting in 34 goals in his last nine starts but only a handful being considered truly soft. Tonight, the King's performance was hardly royal. Like the rest of the team, he looked solid in the first period and then fell apart, letting in six goals on the Flyers' 18 shots in the second and third frames.

Without Henrik being his normal superhuman self in net, the Rangers will have a hard time earning points. Even trigger happy Tampa Bay can't score enough goals to make up for porous defense and falty goaltending...unless of course they're playing New York.

Recaps: Y!/AP, TSN Broadband