David Quinn talk gives Jimmy Vesey new view on benching

DENVER — There was a conversation, Jimmy Vesey acknowledged, “but the kind of one that you never want to have or leaves you with a good feeling.”

The conversation essentially consisted of David Quinn, the coach, telling Vesey, the player, he would be sitting out Wednesday’s match against the Penguins at the Garden as a healthy scratch and the reasons behind the decision.

“It took me a little bit by surprise, yeah,” Vesey, who was reinstated for Friday’s contest against the Avalanche, told The Post following the morning optional skate. “There was a little bit of give-and-take, I thought I’d been pretty productive in this last stretch, but obviously he had a different view of it and I have to respect his evaluation and take it to heart.

“I think I need to hit the reset button a little bit and get back to basics.”

Vesey had recorded one goal over his previous three games, and just that one goal plus five assists in the 11 games leading into his temporary banishment from the lineup. The third-year winger out of Harvard has spent most of the season on a unit with Brett Howden, posting 20 points (10-10) in 38 games. The 25-year-old’s 10 goals are tied with Kevin Hayes for third on the team behind Chris Kreider’s 20 and Mika Zibanejad’s 11. His seven goals at five-on-five are second behind Hayes’ 13.

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Still, those numbers did not protect Vesey from becoming a healthy scratch for the second time in his three-year career. He previously sat toward the end of his rookie season, on March 31, 2017, also at home and coincidentally also against the Penguins. He also became the 10th forward and 17th player to watch in street clothes when healthy. Hayes, Kreider, Howden, Zibanejad, Mats Zuccarello, Jesper Fast, Marc Staal and Ryan Strome are the only Rangers to escape that designation.

“He told me I need to move my feet more all over the ice,” Vesey said of the feedback from Quinn. “I agree with him in that sense. We did talk about things and David said that his motivation is simply to get me to do the things on a consistent basis that I need to do in order to become a better player. That’s the bottom line for him. I certainly can’t take issue with that.”

The Rangers had won only five of their preceding 17 games, but had managed to produce 15 points over that stretch by getting the loser’s point in five overtime or shootout defeats. They were on the periphery of the playoff race, almost equidistant between tournament qualification and the top pre-lottery draft position.

The Avalanche, one of the league’s most dramatic early surprises, had lost six straight (0-4-2) and held the Western Conference’s first wild-card spot, but were just two points clear of a playoff berth. Colorado, driven by the dominant first unit of Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon and Mika Rantanen, is desperate for support-scoring and an intriguing potential trade partner for any one of the Blueshirts’ hypothetically available forwards including Hayes, Zuccarello, Vlad Namestnikov or Chris Kreider.

Colorado, of course, holds Ottawa’s first-rounder as a result of last season’s three-way deal that included Nashville and in which Matt Duchene went to the Senators and Kyle Turris went to the Predators. With the Senators having crashed as winners of none of their past six (0-5-1) and three of their past 14 (3-9-2), Ottawa is in a prime position for the pre-lottery top slot. It is inconceivable that Colorado general manager Joe Sakic would move that pick in a deal for, say, Hayes or Kreider, should the Blueshirts make the latter available. For both? Hmmm.

But the Avalanche’s own first-rounder could turn into a top-15. So that might be a place to start, especially since top righty defense prospect, Cale Makar of UMass, seems off-limits and another promising young righty defenseman, Conor Timmins, has missed the entire season with post-concussion issues.

The place for Vesey to start was by “being engaged.”

“It’s on me to be engaged physically, to battle my way to the net and to win pucks all over the ice,” he said. “I need to skate and play hard. When I do that, good things usually happen.”