Rangers are starting to let the ‘B.S.’ leave their game

Development and winning hockey games are not mutually exclusive concepts. That is essential to keep in mind in examining the Rangers and David Quinn, the coach who was hired to shepherd this rebuilding operation to success.

“If you’re coming into the league on a team where there’s a losing culture or an acceptance of losing, it can snowball on you very quickly and chances are that you never develop into the player you could become,” Marc Staal told The Post following the Blueshirts’ 3-2 victory over the Avalanche at the Garden on Tuesday night. “That’s not what we’re accustomed to here.

“More than that, we are not going to allow that here. If we play under the guidelines the coaches are giving us and we play hard, we’re going to have a chance to win hockey games.”

The Rangers have won two now, two out of six in the wake of the club’s most complete and diligent effort of the season as a prologue to facing the Caps in Washington on Wednesday. They played the type of straight-line hockey Quinn has been preaching from even before the first puck was dropped at training camp. They added a measure of tenacity that had been missing too often through their 1-4 getaway.

“We have to have more of a grit element to our game offensively,” Quinn said before the game, in expanding upon his decision to scratch the underachieving, albeit talented Pavel Buchnevich. “We have to get to the net, there has to be less B.S. to our game offensively.”

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But the Rangers may have a significant faction of players who are more comfortable slipping into top hats than hard hats. The thought has occurred that Quinn is attempting to hammer square pegs into round holes. That thought, however, was rejected by the coach.

“I’m just asking you to be physical enough and hard enough to allow your skills to influence the game,” Quinn said in response to that theory. “[Sidney] Crosby, [Nathan] MacKinnon, [Connor] McDavid; those guys are on the inside. There’s enough of a grit element to their game so that they flourish offensively.”

Though there were boo-boos here and there, Staal and Brendan Smith were solid as the matchup pair against the splendid MacKinnon and linemates Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen. Smith, indeed, has been his team’s best defensemen since the start of the season. On Saturday, Quinn used the Mika Zibanejad-Chris Kreider-Jesper Fast line as the dominant forward match against McDavid and the line did fine. The same unit went against MacKinnon in this one and held Colorado’s top guns even-steven in possession. Tough work.

“We can still improve on the details of the game; body position, stick position, coverage off faceoffs,” said Staal. “Those are the things that can lose games if you’re not on top of it. That’s a large reason why we only won one of the first five.”

Buchnevich — a healthy scratch once last season, in Game 42 at Las Vegas on Jan. 7 — may not get back in to face the Caps. Cody McLeod, who took No. 89’s lineup spot, played his most effective hockey as a Ranger in his 5:03 on the fourth line with Ryan Spooner and Vinni Lettieri. Quinn has not dressed the same roster in consecutive games, yet.

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Coming off of this one, this should be the time. At some point, familiarity breeds cohesion. Six games, and Brett Howden has started with six sets of linemates. Kevin Hayes has started between four different sets of wingers. Indeed, the Blueshirts have used 17 different line combinations and eight distinct defensive pairs to start their half-dozen matches. This lineup, with Filip Chytil on the wing, merits another look.

Henrik Lundqvist was outstanding yet again, the netminder sharp behind pretty solid D-zone coverage before stopping two of three in the shootout to make Kevin Shattenkirk’s third-inning score stand as the winner.

“I know what’s going on in front of me and I feel like the guys know what’s going on,” said the King, 2-3/1.99/.939 and who may well go back-to-back in D.C. “I think it’s getting better and better.”

Lundqvist’s recent shootout success has been iffy. Indeed, his skills-competition save percentage was just .628 while going 13-15 the past five years after dominating at .763 in winning 45-of-75 his first eight years in the league. Wednesday, Lundqvist unveiled a new trick, poking the puck off MacKinnon’s stick as the Colorado captain cut across from right to left.

The goaltender protested when it was suggested that a shootout poke was, well, unexpected. “I’ve done that before,” he said. “Go back and look at when Crosby was a rookie and I poked it from him.”

Lundqvist was a rookie that year, too. It was 2005-06.