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Rangers fall to lowly Kings

BY STEVE ZIPAY | steve.zipay@newsday.com

February 6, 2008

In the arc of any season, there are unexpected descents.

For the Rangers, there already were damaging losses to lower-tier teams: Phoenix, Edmonton, Tampa, Florida. Add last night's game to the ledger.

With a three-game winning streak on the line at Madison Square Garden against the Los Angeles Kings, who have the fewest points in the league, the Rangers slipped off the ledge again, sleepwalking in the first period, falling behind 2-0 and losing, 4-2, to the only team in the Western Conference out of the playoff hunt.

"This was a game that we needed and we didn't get it because we didn't play hard enough, early enough and weren't smart enough, long enough," a steaming coach Tom Renney said.

Renney had predicted that the Kings - 6-3-1 in their previous 10 and with nothing to lose - would play their best game of their road trip. Not only was he correct, the Rangers' defense broke down and the cracks could worsen. Blair Betts, perhaps the team's best defensive forward who had played every game this season, injured his left knee on a check along the boards in the first period and didn't return and will be evaluated today.

Sean Avery's first meeting with his former team - on the one-year anniversary of the trade - didn't begin or finish the way he'd have wanted. He took two penalties in the first, and midway through the second, he lost the puck along the boards to Anze Kopitar, and Alexander Frolov swept past Jason Strudwick to make it 3-1. "Some pretty glaring mistakes tonight that cost us goals," Renney said. "The third one was the killer."

Avery cut the lead to one with his fifth goal of the season, sliding a rebound past a diving Jason LaBarbera at 17:26, the only one of the 24 Rangers shots in the second that found the net. But in the third, Frolov outfought both Fedor Tyutin and Chris Drury behind the Rangers' net, and his pass found Kopitar cruising in the slot, and his wrister at 1:21 restored the two-goal lead. "You have to outwork your opponent, which we didn't do to start with and when we got working, we weren't smart," Renney said.

The Rangers (27-23-6, seventh in the East) dozed through most of the first period, except on the penalty-kill, thwarting three Kings power plays. But the Kings, who at one point outshot the Rangers 14-1, didn't need the man-advantage to score twice. Strudwick fumbled the puck behind the goal and Michal Handzus fed Scott Thornton in front for the first at 10:10. Big rookie center Brian Boyle scored his second in two games when Scott Gomez skated away and left him unguarded at 13:08. After a Renney timeout, the Rangers turned physical and when Nigel Dawes deflected Paul Mara's point shot, Drury - with Derek Armstrong hanging on him - beat LaBarbera for his 17th of the season and fifth in four games. The goal, at 17:50, tied Drury with Brendan Shanahan for the team lead.

"It looked like they had more energy than us," said Jaromir Jagr, who had seven shots. "I thought we should have jumped on them to get a lead. but it was the other way around."

Said Gomez: "No excuses. We've got to go even harder."

Blue notes

The Rangers are 4-2 at home in the last six and face the Stanley Cup champion Ducks tomorrow ... Gomez had a four-game point streak snapped ... Henrik Lundqvist finished with 27 saves ... With Shanahan missing his second straight game and Ryan Hollweg serving a one-game suspension, left wing Dane Byers, 21, made his Rangers debut ... Marcel Hossa, whose back spasms have caused him to miss five games, and Marek Malik (knee) were scratched.

Tomorrow

Ducks at Rangers

7 p.m.

TV: MSG

Radio: WEPN (1050), WLNG (92.1), WLIR (107.1)