It is not one thing not to be big enough or fast enough or skilled enough. It is quite another thing not to care enough.
And it is even something else altogether not to care at all, which is the impression the Rangers left with anyone and everyone who had the misfortune of watching last night’s 6-0 defeat to the Flyers.
Something is rotten at the Garden.
“It’s a privilege to put this jersey on and play in this city, but I don’t know if we know that as a team right now,” Sean Avery told The Post after the debacle in which the Blueshirts fell behind 3-0 in the first and were outshot 29-10 through two periods. “I don’t know what to do to try and find that, but that sense of pride has to be found.
“It’s a privilege to play for the Rangers and for these fans, especially. The organization treats us too well for us not to give a [expletive], which is exactly the way it was in this game.”
The Rangers did not compete last night. They did not take the body. They did not create battles, let alone win them. They did not attempt to retrieve the puck after losing it. They did not skate back hard.
They looked less like professionals than they did guys with high-paying no-show jobs.
Coach John Tortorella was at a loss after the loss. Asked whether it appeared to him as if the Rangers cared, the head coach answered: “No.”
“[But] I believe they do,” he added. “I think I have a good understanding of the people in that locker room, but the way we played. . . . I’m stumped how we played that game.
“That first period was a period I could not understand. The soft passes, the turnaways, the turnovers, the coverages, right on through. I’m being honest — I don’t know why we played the way we did.
“We just have to start over.”
The team’s best players were among the worst. Marian Gaborik, who has scored just one even-strength goal in the last 12 games and seems to be wearing down after weeks of carrying the team, was invisible. Brandon Dubinsky was a horror show. Marc Staal had a stinker. Chris Drury was inept. Dan Girardi was nowhere to be found.
“I was atrocious. It was the worst game I have ever played for the Rangers,” Dubinsky, a gaffe machine, told The Post. “There’s nowhere to hide. My play was completely unacceptable.”
And then there was Henrik Lundqvist, who could do nothing to lift his club before he was lifted in favor of neophyte Chad Johnson following the first period.
“When a team has a period like we did in the first, I have to play even better and I didn’t,” said The King, beaten by Blair Betts at 0:54, Danny Briere at 11:51 and Claude Giroux at 13:28, all at even-strength. “So I wasn’t good enough, either.
“But there have been at least a couple of games where we’ve come out flat and haven’t been ready to battle, and that’s very disturbing.
“That’s where it all starts in hockey — with being prepared to battle from the start to the finish. I honestly don’t know why we don’t have it, I don’t, but we need to understand that we cannot play this way if we are going to make the playoffs.”
Something is rotten at the Garden.