NY-BOS: New Look Rangers Down Bruins at The Garden

John Tortarella's new look Rangers secured a crucial two points with a 4-3 victory over the conference leading Boston Bruins at Madison Square Garden today. 

The victory gives the Rangers 76 points on the season and moves them, at least temporarily into a tie for fifth in the Eastern Conference. 

Newcomer Nik Antropov immediately endeared himself to the Garden crowd with an early second period goal to open the scoring off a beautiful feed from Chris Drury. The goal was his 22nd of the season. 

Antropov, along with fellow newcomer Derek Morris, also added an assist on a Scott Gomez powerplay goal later in the second to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead. 

Much of the hype leading into today's game was the return to Garden ice of agitator Sean Avery.  Avery, as expected, was greeted with fierce chants of "Avery, Avery" as he skated on the Garden ice as a Ranger for the first time since last season's playoffs. 

Beyond the excitement of his return, he also played a very solid game chipping in an assist on Ryan Callahan's 15th goal of the season to give the Rangers a 3-1 second period lead. 

But Boston would not be put away easily.  The Bruins dominated the early part of the third period scoring two quick goals—a rocket from Zdeno Chara and a powerplay goal by Michael Ryder, to knot the game at 3-3.

While the new faces made an immediate impact, it was two old faces who put the game away for the Blueshirts.  Nikolai Zherdev scored 13:38 into the third period to put the Rangers back ahead for good and Henrik Lundqvist made 36 saves for his 29th win of the season.

Lundqvist kept the Rangers in the game, facing a blistering 21 shots in the third period alone.

The victory was the third in a row for the Rangers to break them out of a prolonged slump and reposition them for a run to the Eastern Conference playoffs.  The Rangers are now 3-1-1 under John Tortarella.