No matter how hairy the game got over its final 30 minutes, the bottom line of last night's game in Madison Square Garden was that the Flyers closed out their 9-of-10 on the road stretch with seven wins and pushed the Rangers two points further back in the Atlantic Division race. The scariest thing about this Flyers team is that the club has been winning regularly while showing that there is plenty of room for improvement over the way it has played since the game before the Christmas hiatus.

I don't know what it is with this Flyers team and 3-goal leads but there have been too many games this season -- the home loss to San Jose, the 8-7 loss to Tampa, the loss in Boston last week, and very nearly last night -- where Philly has built up what should have been a commanding lead only to take their foot off the gas pedal and pay the price for it. With the Rangers playing for the third time in four nights (albeit with the Flyers playing for the fourth time in six, all on the road), the Flyers needed to do a better job of closing out the game in the third period.

Without question, the turning point of last night's game occurred at 8:32 of the second period when Sean Avery and company gooned it up a bit in an effort to spark some emotion and swing the momentum. Say what you will about Avery's low-life methods -- selecting the usually non-combative Matt Carle as the player he went after and then continuing to punch the Flyers defenseman as he lay on the ice (which is a level that Dan Carcillo did not stoop to when he gleefully dropped the gloves with an obliging Marian Gaborik last year). It worked.

The Rangers basically owned the game from that point onward. The 19 shots the Flyers allowed in the second period were the second most the club has yielded in any period this season (they gave up 22 in the first period of their debacle in Vancouver on Dec. 28). In the third period, the Flyers total of 3 shots on goal were the fewest they've generated in any period this season.

On the flip side, the 33 hits the Flyers were credited with last night were the most they've been credited with in the last 25 games (they had 38 on Nov. 16 in Montreal). In addition, Philly blocked 24 shots, the most in the last 30 games (26 on Long Island on Nov. 6 is the season high).

Even with Danny Briere's five-game goal streak coming to an end, the Flyers got two points (1 G, 1 A) from Ville Leino, who was out on the ice with Jeff Carter and James van Riemsdyk for the Flyers first two goals. It was also a huge lift for the club to get a shorthanded goal from Mike Richards to build the 3-0 lead. On the blueline, Braydon Coburn and Andrej Meszaros both had monster games and Brian Boucher had a strong bounceback from the third period implosion in Boston.

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