Fright night before Halloween: Isles lose,6-1

PHILADELPHIA - One night before Halloween, and Islanders fans witnessed enough ghastly scenes in the team's fourth straight loss to last them the whole weekend.

To start, there was an ugly 6-1 loss to the Flyers. There also was the nasty blow Danny Briere delivered to Frans Nielsen's head off a draw that incited a massive brawl, featuring Rick DiPietro tangled up with Chris Pronger, of all people.

And then, of course, there was the matter of the six goals given up by DiPietro in his sixth start of the season.

To be fair, the Islanders did not play well in front of DiPietro, but he was not at his best. He incurred two penalties for leaving the crease and almost gift-wrapped a goal for Blair Betts with a giveaway in his own end. "It wasn't a good game," he said.

Coach Scott Gordon declined to pull him in favor of Dwayne Roloson and said the blame wasn't solely his to bear. "He's got to fight through it. Roloson played [Friday] and we have some time off," Gordon said. "At that point, it wasn't a question of it all being Ricky's fault, either."

The Islanders fell behind by two goals in the first period, but the most worrisome scene undoubtedly was that of head trainer Garrett Timms rushing onto the ice to check on DiPietro. But the goalie stayed in the game.

Said Gordon, "We just wanted to check on him because initially it looked like something was bothering him, but it was just a shot that hit his helmet."

After goals by Kimmo Timonen and Jeff Carter made it 2-0, the Flyers added four in the second. Carter tallied his second of the game and Pronger scored twice, with Andreas Nodl chipping in on an odd-man rush.

Trent Hunter left the game in the middle frame after being slapped with a five-minute boarding major and a game misconduct for his hit on Andrej Meszaros that left the defenseman face-down on the ice. "I thought I waited long enough that it wasn't from behind, and I'm pretty sure it was shoulder-on-shoulder," Hunter said.

The hit sparked a heated scrum along the boards; DiPietro skated out of his crease and joined in, trying to pull Ville Leino off Nielsen and receiving a penalty on the play.

Nielsen scored against an impressive Sergei Bobrovsky after drawing a penalty shot on a shorthanded breakaway and opting for his patented backhander at 8:09 of the second.

The Danish center went down late in the third period after being cross-checked in the head by Briere in the faceoff circle, leading emotions to boil over and DiPietro to get locked up with Pronger one minute before time expired.

Joked DiPietro, "I was just looking for somebody except him, let's be honest."