Filip Chytil is inching toward his Rangers breakout

This is not quite the same scenario that went down a year ago, when Filip Chytil was so impressive in his first Rangers training camp and then looked so overwhelmed once his rookie season started. That Broadway debut lasted two games for the teenager before a demotion and then a late-season call-up cameo of another seven games.

Yet now, the 19-year-old Czech forward is less precocious. He is bigger and stronger. He is more comfortable with the language, having spent all but two weeks of the summer living in America. He is more comfortable with the North American game and the smaller ice.

And he is also more comfortable with the NHL, where he had another “welcome” moment when he took a shot to the head from Patrik Berglund on Saturday night in Buffalo, a hit that sent him to the locker room for mandatory concussion testing that he passed before returning to the game.

“I have to be a little careful of who is around me,” Chytil told The Post on Thursday morning with his team tried to break their season-opening three-game losing streak with a Garden match against the Sharks. “It’s the NHL, sometimes those things happen.”

Just like sometimes first-round picks pan out and sometimes they don’t. Chytil, who was taken No. 21 overall in 2017, has looked like nothing but a terrific talent in his time with the Rangers, beginning with that first training camp. A year spent mostly with AHL Hartford also helped the development, learning how the game can be so much faster on the smaller ice sheet.

He came into this most recent camp looking like he was ready to take over a top-six role, with his offensive abilities dazzling in the preseason. But with the Rangers having come out of the gate 0-3-0 under first-year NHL head coach David Quinn, that found Chytil being placed Thursday night on what was ostensibly the fourth line, centering Vlad Namestnikov and Vinni Lettieri.

“To me, he’s got game-breaking ability,” Quinn said of Chytil. “He’s got great skill. He skates well, great vision. Very coachable. There’s a lot to like about him. He’s got a great future in this league.”

Through the first three games, Chytil had registered no goals and two assists. He knows he is supposed to be a points producer, but wasn’t trying to put too much pressure on himself to start stuffing the stats sheet.

“I have to focus on what are my strengths and help the team. I have to shoot more,” he said. “I think I felt good in my game, and it’s most important that I play my game. If I’m going to play like that, the goals and assists are going to come. But to focus on my game is the most important.”

There is no question that the Rangers’ brass feels strongly about Chytil being a centerpiece of their team going forward, and as of now, that means his development is best suited in the NHL. That is unlike the center taken at No. 7 overall in that 2017 first round, Lias Andersson, who did not make the team out of camp and is now working on his game with the Wolf Pack.

There is also Brett Howden, the 20-year-old pivot who was a huge part of the return in from the Lightning in last year’s Ryan McDonagh-J.T. Miller trade. Howden was a moderate surprise to make the team out of camp, but he has excelled thus far and Quinn gave him a shot on Thursday between Chris Kreider and Mats Zuccarello.

The hope is that Chytil can help them turn things around for the Rangers, and that he was capable of doing that after the growth he has gone through in the past year.

“It’s 82 games in the season, and this is just three games,” Chytil said. “I think maybe it’s good that we lost these games, now we’re going to play harder, now we’re going to play maybe better. Focus on our system, the way we want to play. We want to win.”