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Prucha, Cullen lead Rangers past Bruins

Jan 30, 2007 - 4:22 AM BOSTON (Ticker) -- Petr Prucha's lucky break opened the floodgates for the New York Rangers.

Prucha scored twice, Matt Cullen had a goal and two assists and Brendan Shanahan netted a penalty-shot tally to lead the Rangers to a 6-1 victory over the Boston Bruins.

New York scored twice while shorthanded and once on the power play to win for the third time in five games. The Rangers have their first-ever six-game winning streak over Boston, which has dropped four of five.

Prucha opened the scoring at 9:11 of the first period when his centering pass from behind the net bounced off the skate of Bruins center Patrice Bergeron and past the left pad of goaltender Tim Thomas.

"Petr has had some very strong games for us this year," Rangers coach Tom Renney said. "This is just another one. We place a lot of value on whether a guy is scoring or not and that clouds what he is doing otherwise. ... Petr always plays hard. It's just nice to see him get rewarded with a couple of goals."

After defenseman Michael Rozsival snapped a 1-1 tie with 1:10 left in the opening session, Prucha gave the Rangers a 3-1 lead by completing his second multi-goal game of the season at 6:08 of the second.

"I don't know what is going so well," Prucha said of playing on the same line with Cullen and Jed Ortmeyer. "It just seems everything is meshing on that line. We really fit with each other. We're just playing good right now."

Boston replaced Thomas with Hannu Toivonen, who surrendered a shorthanded tally to Cullen nearly four minutes later on a wrister that found the top right corner.

"It never even crossed my mind," Thomas said. "I was totally surprised when I looked up and saw Hannu on the ice. I was surprised and perplexed because it hadn't crossed my mind at all. I felt bad for Hannu."

"It was right thing to do at that time," Boston coach Dave Lewis said of lifting Thomas. "You have to get saves. The only good thing from tonight is we continued to grind it out. We didn't quit. You can't give up six goals and expect to win any hockey game."

Playing his 1,400th career game, Shanahan was awarded a penalty shot at 6:26 of the third period after being hooked on a breakaway by Bergeron and captain Zdeno Chara while the Rangers were shorthanded.

On the penalty shot, Shanahan lifted the puck under the crossbar past Toivonen for his 25th goal of the season and 623rd of his career.

Ortmeyer has three assists in his first career three-point game and netminder Henrik Lundqvist made 29 saves to raise his record to 21-15-2 for New York.

"I thought Prucha was in on a lot of pucks tonight and I thought Ortmeyer was really good in terms of getting in and causing a lot of turnovers," Cullen said. "We were able to get a few to go in and they weren't necessarily pretty goals, but I think they were created by speed and putting pressure on the puck."

After Thomas stopped 12 shots in nearly 27 minutes, Toivonen recorded 11 saves. Bergeron scored Boston's lone goal with 9:05 left in the first period.

"It's a devastating loss," Lewis said. "We're going to pick ourselves up and play our best tomorrow in Buffalo. Our record indicates we're not good enough right now."

"There were a couple of awful breaks in the first period and when you're struggling, you get all of the terrible breaks," Boston center Marc Savard said. "The special teams looked OK. We looked pretty good and we had some chances, but when you're on a run like this, it doesn't work out."