GAME DAY: Blueshirts' Next Stop: Broad Street

RANGERS at FLYERS, 7 p.m.Wells Fargo CenterMSG Network, 98.7 FM
GAME DAY
PHILADELPHIA --The NHL's rudest guests are about to visit one of the League's most inhospitable hosts. Something's gotta give on Friday night.
A weekend home-and-home series between the Rangers and Flyers gets started on Friday at a time when these rivals are two of the hottest teams in the National Hockey League: The Rangers, winners of five straight and 9-1 in their last 10, versus the Flyers, winners of four straight and 13-4-1 since Jan. 13.
And this weekend showdown will wrap up on Sunday afternoon at Madison Square Garden, it begins on Friday night in Philly, where the Blueshirts will bring in their franchise-record nine-game road winning streak to face a Flyer team that has been hard to beat on Broad Street: No NHL team has more home-ice wins than the Flyers' 22.
The Flyers come in rested, having had just two home days over the last seven days, and none since their 4-2 win over the Sharks on Tuesday. The Rangers will complete a road back-to-back, their third road game in four nights, and will be playing their team-record-tying 15th and final game of February.

But these Rangers already have set the franchise record for victories in the month of February, when they picked up their League-leading 11th win this month in a come-from-behind 5-2 victory in Montreal on Thursday night.
This matchup of road warriors vs. homebodies extends to the goal creases, too, where Alexandar Georgiev and Carter Hart will square off. On Thursday night Georgiev won his fifth consecutive road start, his 13th win in 17 starts away from home this season. Hart, meanwhile, hasn't lost on home ice since the same day the Blueshirts last lost a road game -- Jan. 11 -- five straight wins for Hart in Philly, where this season he is 17-2-2 with a 1.65 goals-against average and a .941 save percentage.
Each goaltender will face a team that has been one of the highest-scoring clubs in the league for a nearly two months now -- but it is the Rangers who bring in the hottest hands. Mika Zibanejad has scored in six consecutive games, and has points in nine straight, both career-long streaks. His game-tying goal on Thursday in Montreal was No. 30 on the season, matching his career best from a year ago, and it was set up by Artemi Panarin, who brings an 11-game point streak into Philly and would match his career best, set earlier this year, if he makes the scoresheet for a 12th straight time on Friday night.
Panarin has set up Zibanejad for a critical goal in back-to-back games now, but only because David Quinn deployed them together to start the 3-on-3 overtime on Tuesday on Long Island, then teamed them up late in Thursday's match in search of an offensive spark. Quinn considered his team "sluggish" in Montreal until they hit another gear and rang up five unanswered goals, the last four of them in the final nine minutes of the game, and it was players like Adam Fox -- who had a goal and an assist and "just continues to play at an elite level," Quinn said -- and forwards in the Rangers' bottom six who played big roles in turning the tide before everybody else poured it on in the third.
"I give them a lot of credit, they upped their game," Quinn said, "and I really liked our third period, from all four lines to our defense corps, and our goalie had to make a few saves in the third as well."
Alain Vigneault's club is one of only eight opponents this season who have managed to hold both Panarin and Zibanejad off the scoresheet, which the Flyers did in their 5-1 victory here back on Dec. 23. But the Rangers come to town a different team than they were around Christmastime, and arrive in Philly this time having climbed into a standings tie with Carolina, two points back of Columbus at the playoff cut line.
"We monitor (the standings); it's human nature. We want to make the playoffs," said Ryan Strome, who scored a pair on Thursday in Montreal. "But at the same time, we can't go out there and control what other teams do, we've got to take care of business like we've been doing. I think we've come with a pretty good mindset: We're focused but we're also staying pretty light in here as a group.
"We want to make this thing interesting. We want to play meaningful games and we're making these games count. Teams are starting to see us catching them in the standings a little bit, and we're going to play all the teams we got to catch up to."
One of those teams is the Flyers, who are on pace to have a leading scorer not named Claude Giroux or Jakub Voracek for the first time in a decade, since Mike Richards led the 2009-10 Flyers. Through 63 games this year that mantle has gone to Travis Konecny, whose team-leading 57 points are just a shade above Sean Couturier's 55. Nine of Konecny's points have come in the last four games.

Konecny's 22 goals are just one better than first-year Flyer Kevin Hayes' 21, two of which came in his first meeting with his former team on Dec. 23.
The Flyers made a pair of adds at the NHL's trade deadline, picking up Nate Thompson from Montreal and Derek Grant from Anaheim; both made their Flyer debuts on Tuesday. The Rangers have been without Pavel Buchnevich for the past two games but he is considered close to a return.
NUMBERS GAME
Numbers and League ranks since Jan. 7:
Rangers: 16 wins (T-1st), 78 goals (T-1st), 55 goals against (T-3rd), 31.1% power play (1st)
Flyers: 14 wins (4th), 76 goals (3rd), 56 goals against (T-6th), 3.62 goals per game (1st)
The Rangers have outscored opponents 35-17 during their nine-game winning streak.
The Rangers have scored 23 goals during their five-game winning streak, from 12 different goal-scorers.
The Rangers have the League's best third-period goal differential, at plus-25 (81 goals, 56 goals against). The Flyers are second at plus-23 (79 goals, 56 against).
The Blueshirts are 13-3 in their last 16 games vs. the Metropolitan Division.
The Flyers are 7-1 in their last eight home games. The loss of that stretch was a 5-0 defeat against the Devils; in the seven wins, they have outscored opponents 30-10.
Philly's home-ice points percentage (22-5-4, .774) is a sliver behind Boston's (22-3-9, .780) for tops in the League.
Carter Hart at home: 17-2-2, 1.65 GAA, .941 save%
Carter Hart on the road: 3-10-1, 3.88 GAA, .855 save%
The Flyers keep opponents to 28.6 shots per game, fewest in the League.
Ten of Philly's 63 games have reached a shootout, tied with New Jersey for most in the League. The Flyers have won five of them.
Friday's matchup will be the 299th in the regular season between the Rangers and Flyers; Sunday's return match will be the 300th. The Flyers have played the Rangers more times than any other opponent.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Mika Zibanejad, now a back-to-back 30-goal scorer, is one of four players in the NHL to score in six straight games this season (Patrick Kane, Sebastian Aho, Max Domi), and is the first Rangers to do so since Jaromir Jagr in 2005-06. Zibanejad ranks sixth in the NHL in goals per game, at .60. His 12 goals and 23 points since Jan. 31 lead the League.
Kevin Hayes has four goals in the last four games, and with 21 this season stands four shy of his career best set in 2017-18 as a Ranger. Hayes has scored in 18 different Flyer games this year; Philadelphia is 17-0-1 when he scores.