Bruins Glide By Rangers

Anson Carter made himself right at home at Madison Square Garden.

"It's a buzz playing in New York City," said Carter, who had two goals and two assists in the Boston Bruins' 5-2 victory over the New York Rangers on Saturday night.

"The Rangers have a good hockey team and very knowledgeable hockey fans. We knew they'd have their supporters and if we held the fort we'd have our chances and that's how it happened."

"We were pretty patient and we didn't want to put on a big show here," Boston coach Pat Burns said. "We just wanted to keep the puck to the inside and that's basically what we did."

New York, 0-4-1 in its last five home games, was jeered by the fans, who showed their displeasure with coach John Muckler with a "Fire Muckler!" chant.

"What's frustrating is that there's a different thing every night that happens," Muckler said. "We haven't been able to score goals on a consistent basis.

"The first 10 minutes of the game we had everything under control. We get a couple of good chances, we don't put the puck in the net. Then they get a big, fat rebound."

Jonathan Girard opened the scoring for Boston at 11:04 of the first period, converting Darren Van Impe's rebound.

Boston struck again at 13:39, with Carter controlling the puck in the left corner and feeding P.J. Axelsson in the right circle. Axelsson's wrist shot beat Mike Richter.

"I was going to shoot it myself but Axe got free in front of the net," Carter said. "He had his gun cocked."

Carter made another beautiful pass to set up Sergei Samsonov on a power play at 17:09. Samsonov's one-timer from the slot was his fifth goal of the season. Carter made it 4-0 with a blast from the high slot at 8:09 of the third period.

New York ended an 0-for-38 drought on the power play at 13:52 of the final period, with Jan Hlavac scoring his first NHL goal.

Carter added his fifth goal of the season with 3:17 to play, and New York's Mathieu Schneider completed the scoring with one second remaining.

"It feels like we've hit rock bottom four or five times this year," Schneider said.

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