NHL

Rangers get ‘spanked’ in Game 1 OT loss

BEATEN DOWN: Boston’s Torey Krug sends Brian Boyle to the ice with a check in the first period. (Paul J. Bereswill)

BOSTON — It was so close for so long that all it took to turn this series-opening game between the Rangers and Bruins was a small shove from Derek Dorsett.

It came 2:20 into overtime, and the interference call on the Rangers winger, drawn by Rich Peverley, didn’t result in the game-winning power play. No, the Bruins instead sucked the life from the Blueshirts for the next 13:20, finally getting a tip-in goal from Brad Marchand with 4:20 remaining in the extra period for a 3-2 win, drawing first blood in this Eastern Conference semifinal destined for tightness.

“I thought it was pretty even going into the overtime,” said coach John Tortorella, “but we got spanked in overtime.”

The Rangers were outshot 16-5 in the overtime, eight of those Bruins shots coming on the power play. The penalty was like an earthquake causing a tsunami, and it was only a matter of time until that wave broke. The Rangers now find themselves again down, again facing a series deficit before they could even catch their breath.

“We never regrouped,” Tortorella said of his team after the penalty. “It was a surge. We couldn’t stop it.”

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If it wasn’t for Henrik Lundqvist making stop after stop, it would have ended a lot sooner. On the penalty kill, he denied Zdeno Chara twice, forced Jaromir Jagr to hit the post and, minutes after the penalty kill was over, made a tremendous left-arm save on David Krejci.

But the one he wanted most came late in the overtime, after Derick Brassard tried a long crossing pass to Rick Nash and it was tipped up ice by Chara, all while defenseman Ryan McDonagh got stuck up-ice after joining the rush. That’s when Patrice Bergeron went the other way and made the pass to Marchand, and as it hit the back of the net, Lundqvist’s facemask went to the ice.

“It’s a tough play, but I can play it better,” said Lundqvist, whose career postseason overtime record fell to 3-11. “I got to see the guy in the middle. I was too focused on the puck.”

Lundqvist was coming off two straight shutouts to finish off the Capitals in a seven-game, first-round win, and finished this game with 45 saves. But there he sat in the locker room, despondent, watching the media walk out with his skates still tied and his hand to his face.

“Sooner or later when you face enough chances like that, you’re going to make a mistake,” he said. “It’s not a mistake I’m going to sleep less over. I thought we played a solid game, but we just came up short here, in overtime again.”

For a series between two teams known more for their grit than their highlights, this one was evenly matched for the whole of the first 60 minutes. It finished the first period tied 0-0, finished the second 1-1, and finished the third 2-2. Both teams had the lead once — the Bruins on Chara’s opening goal 12:23 into the second, negated by McDonagh’s tally with 1.3 seconds remaining in period; then the Rangers with Derek Stepan’s third of the playoffs 14 seconds into the third, negated on the power play by rookie defenseman Torey Krug’s first NHL goal in his second career game.

“We felt like we were right there,” said captain Ryan Callahan. “We’ve dealt with this [losing in OT] before. It happened to us twice in the Washington series. We’ve got two days to regroup and we go right back at it.”

So come Sunday afternoon, back here for Game 2, the Rangers are going to try and forget this one and move on. Now they know, especially in this series, sometimes just the slightest push can be the difference between wanting to forget and wanting to remember.

“If we’re going to win our next game here,” Tortorella said, “we’re going to need to be better.”

bcyrgalis@nypost.com