Sean Avery's New York Rangers Host Rival Flyers in NHL Game of the Week on NBC

The New York Rangers host the Philadelphia Flyers in the NHL Game of the Week on Sunday. The network is promoting this coming Sunday's game as "Sean Avery and the Rangers against the Flyers."
 
The Flyers are trying to chase the Devils for top spot in the Atlantic standings. Their most well known rivals have been the New York Rangers, with whom the Flyers have had many brawls and playoff games over the years. The Rangers are battling to get back the final playoff berth.

The Flyers, 36-19-10, are led by Jeff Carter, who is third in NHL scoring with 38 goals. He snapped out of a scoring funk in the Flyers last game, scoring two against the Buffalo Sabres. The Flyers won 5-2. Daniel Briere is expected to re-join the Flyers in time for the game against the Rangers.

The Rangers have given Sean Avery more ice time each game and rumour has it he has been promoted from the third line to the first. Avery replaced Markus Naslund and may be playing with Scott Gomez and Nikolai Zherdev. Avery played with Gomez last season.

The second line: Dubinsky-Drury-Voros. Third: Naslund-Korpikoski-Callahan. Fourth: Sjostrom-Betts-Orr. Antropov was not at practice as he was "banged-up".

Sunday's Rangers-Bruins game featuring Sean Avery's first appearance at Madison Square Garden got better national ratings on NBC than the match-up between Alexander Ovechkin's Washington Capitals and Sidney Crosby's Pittsburgh Penguins last month.

The Rangers, 34-25-8, had a three game winning streak snapped when they ran into the Carolina Hurricane train. After beating the lowly Colorado Avalanche and New York Islanders, the Rangers upset the league-leading Boston Bruins, 4-3, but were shut out by the streaking Hurricanes, 3-0.

NBC reporter Pierre McGuire will call the action and host NBC's studio show at Madison Square Garden. He says  that "Under Torts the Rangers have improved on the forecheck and also on the power play. He has made them more aggressive in all facets of the game."

McGuire says, "Philadelphia has a quick strike offense led by Jeff Carter and a brilliant young player in Claude Giroux. The only question mark is in goal."

He called Avery a science experiment. "If there's one science experiment that better work for the New York Rangers, it's Sean Avery," he was quoted in a press release.

NBC followed Avery around the rink with its star cam last weekend, in the Rangers game against Boston, and promoted him as the main attraction of this week’s Rangers-Flyers broadcast.