Rangers find a new way to let the Kings break their hearts

This wasn’t anywhere close to the 2014 Stanley Cup final, but boy, the Kings have a special way of breaking the Rangers’ hearts.

Despite the Blueshirts holding a one-goal lead with less than a minute to play in regulation Monday night at the Garden, they ended up losing, 4-3 in overtime, on a sequence of events that left them utterly stunned.

“That last goal kind of sums it up, doesn’t it?” Henrik Lundqvist said after he was beaten by Tyler Toffoli just 25 seconds into the three-on-three extra period, which came just moments after Mika Zibanejad rang one off the Kings crossbar. “We hit the crossbar, they go down and [Toffoli] totally misses his shot, it fools me and goes five-hole. Game over.”

What made it worse was the Rangers (22-22-8) seemingly had the game in hand, a 3-2 lead when the Kings (21-27-4) pulled goalie Jonathan Quick for the extra attacker. That’s when Adam McQuaid got hit with a high stick that went uncalled, leaving just enough room for Adrian Kempe to score his second of the night, tying it with 59.6 seconds remaining in regulation.

“As soon as he shot it, I felt like I was late,” said Lundqvist, who finished with 26 saves. “It surprised me, the fact that he was there.”

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It’s hard to imagine how many more of these body shots the Rangers can absorb before they become a broken team. With the Feb. 25 trade deadline rapidly approaching, they will soon be partially dismantled, only making matters worse.

But the scar tissue is building for a group that is relatively happy with its overall game, but is making just enough small mistakes that end up costing it. And at this juncture, it’s less about the points than it is about the mentality and atmosphere. Even on a night when it was two teams on the outside of the playoff picture, there was still joy on one side and discouragement on the other.

“It sucks,” said Zibanejad, who continued his torrid points streak with a goal and an assist. “In overtime, anything can happen. But we’re up by one with a minute to go and we don’t do a good enough job coming back and they score. We lost a point already there. It’s just disappointing.”

Zibanejad’s line, with Chris Kreider and Mats Zuccarello, continued to be the only unit carrying the offensive load. Kreider got his 24th of the season at 8:32 of the first to go up 1-0, and then Zibanejad scored 32 seconds into the third to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead.

But even that lead wasn’t safe, as Anze Kopitar lifted a backhand past Lundqvist at 5:04 of the third, tying it, 2-2.

“We have a tendency at times, when we’re winning 2-1, to act like it’s 5-1,” coach David Quinn said. “Just such a fine line between winning and losing at this level. You have to finish the job.”

Quinn decided to dress seven defensemen for the second time in the first four games out of the All-Star break, and his insertion of Tony DeAngelo proved a good move with him assisting on Kreider’s game-opening goal. Another defenseman, McQuaid, was the one who allowed the Rangers to take the lead on a seeing-eye floater that beat Quick at 9:15 of the third.

But no one on the team could stop the Kings when the Rangers needed to put the game away. The ringing from the pipe hit by Zibanejad in overtime was still pretty loud in the ears of the Garden faithful when Toffoli went the other way and scored on his half-shank.

That’s just the way it’s going for the Rangers right now, trying to hang on to some sense of optimism before everything turns south.

“That overtime goal sums it up — not only this game, but a lot of games,” Lundqvist said. “The effort is there, but crossbar and out, he misses his shot. I mean, I don’t know what to think. It’s really frustrating.”