Back-up goaltender Stephen Valiquette shut out the Philadelphia Flyers on their home ice for the second time in nine days to lead the New York Rangers to a 2-0 victory.

Valiquette does not play regularly but has now claimed the first two shutouts of his NHL career to beat the Flyers in his last two starts.

The Rangers have won 11 of their last 12 games in Philadelphia as the battle for playoff spots in the Eastern Conference rages on.

"Obviously, they have done a good job in Philly," Flyers defenseman Derian Hatcher said.

"For some reason, we go into New York and I don't want to say that we play better, but things seem to go a little different there.

"Obviously, it's something that we have to look at."

The Rangers hold the seventh of the eight playoff spots in the East and won their fourth straight road game on Saturday.

"We need to focus this way at home," said Valiquette, who now has a shutout streak of 122 minutes, 30 seconds.

"We lost two big games this week and at this time last week I was hoping this would be a springboard to 10 wins in a row."

Rangers coach Tom Renney was not sure if Valiquette would play again on Sunday, when they are set to face Washington's Alexander Ovechkin.

"We've done a lot of building this year," he said. "We've got to make this one mean something more than just the two points [they got] today."

Nigel Dawes and Scott Gomez scored powerplay goals for the Rangers.

Daniel Afredsson returned to the Ottawa Senators line-up and combined with Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza combined for all six goals and 15 points in a 6-1 home win over the Montreal Canadiens .

Spezza had three goals and three assists, Alfredsson two goals and three assists and Heatley a goal and three assists.

Evgeni Malkin contributed two goals and an assist to lead the Pittsburgh Penguins to a 4-2 win over the visiting Los Angeles Kings.

Malkin has seven goals and 10 assists since Sidney Crosby suffered an ankle injury and the team is 5-2-2 in those nine games.

Nik Antropov scored 1:02 into overtime to give the lowly Toronto Maple Leafs a 3-2 home decision over the Detroit Red Wings, the team with the best record in the league.

The New Jersey Devils got four goals from defensemen, including two to Paul Martin, to blast the visiting Carolina Hurricanes 6-1.

Marek Svatos had two goals and an assist, linemate Tyler Arnason a goal and two assists and Milan Hejduk two goals to lead the visiting Colorado Avalanche to a 6-2 victory over the slumping Vancouver Canucks , winners of only two of their last 11 games.

The Sharks edged the Nashville Predators 4-3 in San Jose as Jonathan Cheechoo registered a hat-trick and added an assist and Joe Thornton set up all three Cheechoo goals.

Reuters