Rangers rally to beat Flyers in outdoor game

New York goaltender Henrik Lundqvist saved a penalty shot with 19.6 seconds remaining to give the Rangers a 3-2 victory over Philadelphia in the NHL Winter Classic outdoor game Monday. The 29-year-old Swede made 34 saves, the biggest on Danny Briere’s penalty shot, while Mike Rupp scored twice for New York and Brad Richards netted the game-winning goal to rally the Rangers from a two-goal deficit. “The way we battled back and with the penalty shot that late in the game, there are a lot of great things I will remember,” Lundqvist said. “It was exciting. It was just amazing.” At the home ballpark of Major League Baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies, a sellout crowd of 46,967 endured brisk winds, frigid temperatures and brief snow to watch the unique made-for-television NHL regular-season matchup. “It was spectacular,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said. “We couldn’t have asked for any more from the event.” Rupp scored his second goal of the game and third of the season to equalize just 2:41 into the third period, flicking a tough-angled shot inside the near post to the right of the Flyers’ Russian goaltender, Sergei Bobrovsky. Richards gave the Rangers their first lead only 2:40 later, the Canadian slapping in a rebound for the final goal. The Flyers pulled Bobrovsky for an extra attacker in the closing seconds and forced a sprawled Lundqvist to block a shot by Briere with his right leg, but the puck trickled through and toward the goal before New York defenseman Ryan Callahan dove on the puck, a violation that gave the Flyers a penalty shot. “I couldn’t believe he called a penalty shot,” Lundqvist said. “There was a lot of pressure on me. The end was pretty intense.” Lundqvist denied Briere on the penalty shot and the Rangers held off the Flyers over the last seconds for the triumph. “I just tried to be patient and do my thing,” Lundqvist said. “He’s a tricky guy. If I make the first move, he’s going to score. “It would have been hard to swallow if he had scored.” Rangers coach John Tortorella called the third-period officiating “horrible” and “disgusting” and both he and Lundqvist wondered if the penalty shot call was made simply to build the drama. “Maybe they wanted to get it to over-time,” Tortorella said. The Rangers won for the seventh time in eight games and improved to 24-9-4 with 52 points to stay atop the Eastern Conference, the first time since 1996 they have topped the conference so late in the season. The Flyers fell to 22-10-4, having dropped five of their past seven games and all three meetings with the Rangers this season. After losing the 2010 Classic at Boston, Philadelphia also became the first two-time Classic loser. “They picked up their game in the third period,” said Flyers coach Peter Laviolette. “The first 40 minutes were what we were trying to do. Then they were able to get the lead and hang on. “We talked about getting to (Lundqvist) with more traffic. We will continue to work on that.” Lundqvist starred in the first period, stopping all 12 shots by the Flyers, including a pair of breakaways, the best of them by 39-year-old Czech star Jaromir Jagr, who aggravated a left leg injury skating between two defenders. “He made some big saves at big times,” Tortorella said of Lundqvist.