Good, Bad, Ugly: Rangers rip away 1st place from Philly

The Good: The Rangers first two goals tonight in the second period came off deflections sent off the stick of Whale call-up defenseman Stu Bickel. The first one scored by Stepan was an incredible display of hand-eye coordination by Stepan tipping Bickel's shot past Bryzgalov that was going well wide. The goal was under review by the war room in Toronto but was quickly ruled a good goal. The Rangers second goal was kinda fluky. Bickel shot the puck from nearly the same spot that led to Stepan's goal on net that deflected off of Fedotenko in front. The way the puck went into the net and bounced out fooled the ref but once play stopped the play was quickly reviewed and ruled a good goal. The Rangers third goal scored by Gaborik who now leads the league with 21 goals came off of a faceoff win. The puck quickly found its way to Stralman who cleared the zone off the boards to a streaking Gaborik and he beat Bryzgalov on a breakaway to run the Rangers lead to 3-0. Gaborik took a slash to the left shoulder before shooting the puck past the Flyers goalie but reports after the game stated he was ok. Ryan Callahan made it 4-1 on the power play following a shot by Girardi on Bryzgalov who left a rebound right on Callahan's stick to provide the Rangers extra insurance.

The Bad & The Ugly: I'm too excited by tonight's enormous win to go over the two Flyer goals but more importantly, there a couple loose ends the Rangers need to tie up. First off, the Rangers at some point have to start waking up sooner in the first period. To say they sleptwalked through the first period would be a little harsh but the Rangers didn't have a shot on goal until there were nearly 5 mins left in the period mainly due to the Rangers trying to be too cute on the puck. Both teams did come out and bang the body around on each other including a KO win by Prust in a fight with Bourdon. Secondly, for a team like the Flyers who are very thin down the middle due to injury, you would expect the Rangers to have a bigger advantage in the faceoff circle which wasn't the case especially in that first period. Finally, the Rangers have to start doing a better job getting pucks on net. The Rangers shooters love to pick the corners and unfortunately that leads to more shots pushed wide.