Rangers preview: What fans see will only be half the project

This will be a two-track season for the organization, one in which the Rangers will more likely than not take the local to the bitter end of 2018-19, and the other in which kids spread across the globe will attempt to get on the fast track to Broadway.

Progress will be measured more by the play of the kids than by the unit on the ice that, almost immaterial of the results, will be broken up and sold off as rental parts by late February.

That, however, does not mean the Blueshirts won’t be able to compete under David Quinn, the first-year NHL head coach who, bottom line, will insist that his players give an effort every time they step onto the ice, and that means during practices as well as in the games.

“Non-negotiable,” he said.

The Blueshirts will have to work hard in order to keep their heads above water because they are not going to out-talent very many folks in a league increasingly driven by individual talent. Put it this way: The active roster combined to score 169 NHL goals last season, 30 fewer than Buffalo, which finished last in the league in offensive production.

Eleven of the 20 players expected to dress for Thursday night’s opener at the Garden against Nashville are 26 or younger, but Filip Chytil, Brett Howden and Alex Georgiev are the lone rookies. Most of the renovation is sight-unseen, back-of-the-house stuff that is taking place off-Broadway.

The team will not be graded on a curve. The organization, however, will be in this two-track season in which making the playoffs is less important in the grand scheme of things than the development of Chytil, Howden, Lias Andersson, Vitali Kravtsov, Libor Hajek, Ryan Lindgren and Nils Lundkvist.

Offense

It will be mindset over matter for the Blueshirts, who want to be a combination of relentless, fast and physical even though the roster isn’t especially fast or physically inclined. Players (and fans watching them) will have to reset their GPS’s from east-west to north-south, with this coach preaching straight-line, net-crashing hockey. If the Rangers want to play fast, they will have to move the puck fast, and that starts with a breakout predicated upon a series of short, quick passes rather than long flings and hope plays.

Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Pavel Buchnevich, who combined for 259:01 of five-on-five play last year, will be given an extended opportunity to skate as the first line. All three components have appeared invigorated at camp. Kevin Hayes and Mats Zuccarello, two pending unrestricted free agents, will play on the Hello, I Must Be Going Line with Jimmy Vesey.

Chytil, the most overtly talented player on the roster, will skate between Jesper Fast and Ryan Spooner while Howden centers fourth-line wingers Vlad Namestnikov and Vinni Lettieri. Cody McLeod is the 13th forward who will be in the mix.

Defense

At first blush, this is not a defense a rebuilding team might ordinarily present, as the Blueshirts are going with 32-year-old Adam McQuaid, 31-year-old Marc Staal and 29-year-olds Kevin Shattenkirk and Brendan Smith on the back end with 24-year-old Brady Skjei and 23-year-old Neal Pionk. There are obviously seat-warmers here, with pending free-agent McQuaid the most prominent. Tony DeAngelo is on the outside looking in at the start.

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The Blueshirts are focused on protecting the middle of the ice and the front of the net while changing from man-to-man to a layered approach in their own end. There has been a noticeable response whenever opponents have encroached on Henrik Lundqvist. The coaches are working on fast-twitch skills so that breakouts are quick and decisive. With so much of the even-strength offense driven from the back, the Rangers will need Shattenkirk to be the puck-mover and dispatcher they envisioned upon signing him during the summer of 2017.

Goaltending

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Coaching

David Quinn has operated in a hermetically sealed environment during a camp that featured long, detail-oriented practices with a series of battle drills. It’s been a breath of fresh air. Now, though, comes the regular season, when the coach will have to adapt to the facts of life of an 82-game schedule. “It’s a honeymoon for everybody right now,” he said. “I’m fully aware of that.” The one-to-one communication is here to stay, though. So too the insistence on hard work.

Most important offensive player

Mika Zibanejad. Centering the first line, Zibanejad is poised to break through and honor his 2011 sixth-overall selection (by Ottawa), if he can stay healthy.

Most important defensive player

Brady Skjei. Entering his third full season but the second-longest tenured Blueshirt defenseman, it’s on Skjei to pick up the baton from where he dropped it after his NHL all-rookie 2016-17. Skjei will likely be on the first matchup pair, partnered with the stay-at-home McQuaid, but the Rangers will require No. 76 to join in, if not lead, the offense from the back end.

Most important rookie

Filip Chytil. Chytil, who turned 19 last month, is the guy with the flair and the highest ceiling in the organization.

Key coaching decision

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There’s the question of balancing ice time vs. performance for the kids, but Quinn’s biggest challenge will be drawing up his practice schedule before the issue of pending rental trades complicates just about everything following the All-Star break.

Prediction

The Rangers might catch some teams by surprise and get more backup goaltenders than usual when the schedule dictates decisions by opposing coaches. They should be a hard-working, puck-pursuit team that’s far more difficult to play against than its recent relatives. But the talent is relatively thin. And a second consecutive trade-deadline purge looms over the entire enterprise. If Lundqvist plays well, the Blueshirts should hang in for a while, but anything other than a second consecutive playoff miss would represent a shock.