How a Michael Grabner reunion can work for rebuilding Rangers

Michael Grabner already went through weeks of high-stress thinking about things he couldn’t control — mainly, where the Rangers were going to trade him.

So now that the speedy winger has landed in New Jersey as part of the first trade between the Devils and Rangers — also becoming one of the rare few to have played for all three New York-area hockey teams — he doesn’t want to start thinking about his pending unrestricted free agency that is likely to come on July 1.

Which is not to say that he’s not interested in reuniting with the Rangers.

“I’m open,” Grabner told The Post before the Devils beat the league-leading Lightning 2-1 on Saturday night in Newark. “I haven’t thought about it, but I’m open to anything. I’m trying to play out my season here, try to have the best possibility of my play here the rest of the year, then see what happens after.”

The Rangers had off Sunday and are playing out the rest of their season in the midst of a rebuild, set to miss the playoffs for the first time in seven years as they prepare for a home-and-home with the Capitals beginning Monday night at the Garden. A reunion with Grabner is a possibility if the price is right — same can be said for Rick Nash — but general manager Jeff Gorton is very unlikely to give out a deal over two years to a veteran, no matter how quickly he wants to turn the ship around.

Grabner will be 31 years old when next season starts, and the Austrian Express has fond memories of playing for the Blueshirts, with whom he resurrected his career on what turned out to be a terrifically discounted price of two years at $3.3 million. He had been coming off a season with the Maple Leafs when he scored nine goals in 80 games, and the offers weren’t exactly flooding in. He took the deal from the Rangers, then scored 27 in his first year on Broadway and followed up with 25 more in the 59 games he played for them this season before the Feb. 23 trade across the river.

He certainly earned himself a substantial raise, and this summer is going to be very different for him compared to two years ago.

“Even last time when I was a free agent, it was a different situation back then, coming off a tough year,” he said. “But I didn’t really think about it until my season was over, then you worry about this kind of stuff.”

Grabner shook his head when thinking about his final few weeks with the Rangers, which was a miserable time for the players after management sent out a memo to the fans Feb. 8 declaring their intention to rebuild. Every day Grabner was reminded of what seemed like an inevitable trade, and every day he tried not to think too much about where he was going to end up.

Finally, as he was held out of a game in Montreal on Feb. 22, he found out he had been traded to the Devils in exchange for a second-round pick and 20-year-old defensive prospect Yegor Rykov. His reaction?

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“I was glad it was over. That was my first reaction,” Grabner said. “It was a long couple weeks before that, just trying to think about it, plan it out. But obviously you get reminded of it quite a bit with fans, family, friends. But I was just glad it was over. And my first thought was that it was good, it was close, not too far from the family. Didn’t disrupt the life too much.”

Grabner’s young family remains up at his home in Westchester while he rents a place in New Jersey. With the Devils having just completed an epic two-week trip, he had not seen his family in 18 days but planned to go there after Saturday night’s game and spend the day off there Sunday.

Soon enough he will be thinking about his next destination, and it could be a return to the Rangers. But that decision isn’t coming just yet.

“For me, it’s a distraction, same as worrying about where I’m going to end up,” he said. “Finally over that, all the stress that happened, now I’m just trying to focus on hockey.”