NHL

Vinny Prospal, an ex-Ranger, would be solid free agent addition

Impossible as it may sound, the Rangers’ lineup in Detroit on Saturday night will include only two forwards who have scored a goal this season.

Brad Richards, by leaps and bounds consistently the Blueshirts’ best player through their troubling 2-6 getaway (and stay away) from the Garden that will end come Monday’s home opener, has five goals.

Derek Dorsett has one goal, that one coming when the Rangers trailed the Sharks 6-1 in the third period in San Jose on Oct. 8, the night Brad Stuart injured Rick Nash with a headshot that seems to have concussed the entire organization.

Indeed, the Rangers have scored 12 goals overall, and six while playing five-on-five. Richards has four of those goals, with Dorsett and the injured Ryan Callahan chipping in with one apiece.

No Nash. No Callahan. No Carl Hagelin until sometime next week.

No weapons of mass production.

Alain Vigneault doesn’t have many options as he stares at a row of goose-eggs from behind the bench and attempts to configure combinations that might generate some offense. The Rangers went hard to the net in Philadelphia on Thursday, but got nothing for it in a 2-1 loss to the Flyers.

This isn’t the time for general manager Glen Sather to panic and to make a move out of weakness. This isn’t the time to sacrifice a prospect for a stop-gap veteran who might be able to stanch the bleeding until the Rangers regain their health.

There is, however, a difference between panicking and being proactive; a difference between remaining consistent to the big picture vision and making a move for the short-term that would have been dismissed as folly in, say, Banff, Alberta, a few weeks ago.

Vinny Prospal is out there, a free agent who has been known to provide some pop and crackle, even if he won’t win even a single foot-race; a free agent who was a popular and productive Ranger for a couple of seasons not all that long ago.

True enough, he would be returning at 38 in a young man’s league, and might have issues dealing with the pace, but the thing is, he always has. Yet, he has always found a way to produce, last year leading the Blue Jackets with 30 points (12 goals, 18 assists) in the 48-game season after recording 55 points (16-39) the previous season.

The fact is, Prospal tied for 70th in the NHL in scoring the last two years in posting the same number of points as Callahan, Daniel Alfredsson, Sam Gagner, Joffrey Lupul and Tomas Plekanec.

The Post has learned Sather has had conversations with Prospal, who is training in the Czech Republic, and his representative. There is no indication the GM is prepared to offer Prospal a contract, but at the same time it does not seem as if he has shut the door on that possibility.

The door should be open and the Rangers should be open to bringing back Prospal, who registered 81 points (29-52) in 104 games from 2009-11, and who always provided the club with an injection of energy.

This would be a low-risk move with potentially substantial reward. The Rangers don’t have a great deal of cap space but Prospal presumably wouldn’t require more than the $850,000 or so the team can invest.

Sather shouldn’t start tearing things apart here — it’s too early, the decimated team is too vulnerable and there’s not much maneuverability built into this roster, anyway — but he can’t simply fiddle (e.g., wait for signing free agent Benoit Pouliot to pay off) while the operation is burning to the ground.

Options that would not even have been considered in training camp, or before Nash and Callahan went down and before both Derek Stepan and Derick Brassard donned their Invisible Man costumes way before Halloween, must be considered now.

That means Prospal.

Henrik Lundqvist worked out on the ice with a small group of players for the second straight day on Friday in Philadelphia before the club chartered to Detroit. It is unknown whether he will be available to face the Red Wings, though it’s more likely than not Cam Talbot will be get the assignment following his 25-save performance in Thursday’s defeat to the Flyers.