Rangers kick off road trip with an absolute clunker

DENVER — Two games into 2019 and 2018 never looked so good.

Or maybe it’s just that the Rangers have looked so bad since the calendar flipped. You can cite this or that as mitigating factors, but please, being outscored by an aggregate 13-3 in consecutive defeats to the Penguins and Avalanche has cast a pall over the new year.

The Blueshirts can’t even count on the loser’s point.

“I don’t even know what to say about this game. We didn’t even give ourselves a chance to win the game,” Jesper Fast told The Post after Friday’s 6-1 rout in which the Blueshirts were shorthanded for nearly nine minutes in the first period and 15:23 overall. “We can’t play this way and think that it’s all right.”

The season eventually exposes everyone. The Rangers, who have won just five of their past 18 games (5-8-5), have been exposed as a team deficient in hockey IQ every bit as much as one that lacks high-end skill, speed and physically imposing athletes. It has become a team that compounds its own mistakes and consistently gets sucked into the vortex of unmanaged emotions.

In this one, which the Blueshirts played without Kevin Hayes, sidelined with lingering issues from that Dec. 14 crash into the rear wall he took late in regulation, the team was down for a full five minutes just 2:29 into the first period when Cody McLeod was assessed a boarding major for his hit on a defenseless Samuel Girard.

You can point out a number of similar checks around the league that aren’t judged as harshly, but that is of less relevance than the Blueshirts’ ongoing dreadful penalty kill. Yes, it was taxed too heavily in this one, but that unit now has allowed 15 power-play goals over the course of the past 14 games, including a pair 2:13 apart while McLeod was in the box. Instead of complaining about the calls, how about the Rangers going more than four of 14 games without allowing a power play goal?

That task became impossible once Nathan MacKinnon blasted one by Alex Georgiev at 4:40. It became 2-0 at 6:53 when Mikko Rantanen’s drive ricocheted in off Neal Pionk. It became 2-0 and over and out because the Rangers could not stay out of the box.

How about this? When Pavel Buchnevich put the Rangers’ first shot on netminder Philipp Grubauer at 11:39 of the period after Georgiev had faced 12 from Colorado, the winger must have been overcome by emotion at accomplishing the feat, for No. 89 was off to the penalty box seven seconds later for tripping. Of course he was.

When the period ended, the Rangers had been outshot 16-3, out-attempted 27-4 overall and 10-2 at five-on-five. And even though it was 2-0 past the midway point of the second period, the game never seemed within reach.

“Once they call it, you’ve got to kill it,” coach David Quinn said. “At the end of the day, we took 11 penalties. Some were stupid and some can be questioned, but you take that number of penalties and you have zero chance to win a game.”

Filip Chytil moved from wing into the middle to take Hayes’ spot on the second line between Vlad Namestnikov and Mats Zuccarello, but it is impossible to assess No. 72’s first game in the middle since Nov. 12 because the Blueshirts so seldom were able to roll five-on-five units. The fact is Chytil, who played 13 of the first 18 games at his natural center position, got just 2:14 of five-on-five time (plus a power-play stint) in the first period.

Chytil did create the Rangers’ best chance of the opening 40 minutes, driving from the left side before being denied by Grubauer. That was at 5:10 of the middle period. One second later, Namestnikov was off to the box for an offensive-zone tripping infraction. Why not? And in that second period, the Rangers: first, picked up their third too-many-men penalty in the past five games; and second, were down two men, twice.

“You put too much energy into the PK even when you kill them,” said Fast, whose team averted a shutout when Ryan Strome scored on a breakaway at 9:21 of the third period. “We just made so many mistakes, again, I don’t know what to say.”

The Rangers talked about it among themselves before they won at Nashville on Dec. 29. Now, they may caucus again.

“We have to straighten this out,” Fast said. “If we want to be in the playoff race, we have to look in the mirror.”

Georgiev was outstanding in facing down a bevy of glorious opportunities before Gabriel Landeskog’s redirect at 12:34 extended Colorado’s lead to 3-0. Chytil had the Rangers’ best chance, bursting in on the left before denied by Grubauer at 5:10 of the period. One second later, Namestnikov was called for an offensive-zone trip. Of course he was.