The Rangers lost their best chance to win the Stanley Cup on May 5 in Washington when they were unable to follow up on their Game 3 triple-overtime victory three nights earlier, instead losing 3-2 in a Game 4 that presaged a second straight grueling seven-game series, and this one against a decidedly ordinary opponent.
Just because something has never been done before doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do it for the first time, but there likely is something to the fact no team has ever won the Stanley Cup after opening the playoffs with consecutive seven-game series since the NHL expanded the tournament beyond two rounds in 1968.
And just because John Tortorella insisted to the very end his team was not fatigued — that playing consecutive seven-game series would prove to be more of a benefit than a deterrent, and any suggestion to the contrary was merely a figment of the media’s imagination — does not mean the Rangers coach was correct or even that he meant what he was saying.
Seriously, what was Tortorella going to say on the eve of the Battle of the Hudson? That the Rangers were cooked? That those of us in the peanut gallery had a point in musing that running a preliminary 14-game obstacle course could come back to haunt his team?
The Blueshirts may have been undone late in that Game 4 in D.C. by suspect officiating, but they played much of the first 40 minutes as if in a stupor. If not that, then perhaps the Rangers simply were paying the price for the monumental ice times a number of their most important players had logged in the 114:41 Game 3 that Marian Gaborik ended.
For though five Rangers played at least 40 minutes in the club’s longest game in 63 years (Ryan McDonagh, 53:21; Marc Staal, 49:30; Dan Girardi, 44:22; Michael Del Zotto, 43:37; Ryan Callahan, 41:52) only one Capital (Dennis Wideman, 41:40) played the equivalent of at least two full periods.
The Blueshirts insisted Tortorella’s rugged training camp had prepared them for the marathon and marathon minutes. There is no reason to not believe them. Fact is, though, the Rangers came with nothing in Game 4, when victory could have set up a five-game series that would have given the Black-and-Blueshirts time to breathe, rest and recover.
The Rangers did win Game 5, the one Brad Richards tied with 7.6 seconds remaining in the third period before Staal won it in OT, but fell flat again in Game 6 in D.C., shut out for 59:09 before losing 2-1.
Ergo, a second-straight seven-game series after which the Blueshirts had one day to rest before starting the Eastern finals against the Devils, who had followed their own opening seven-game first-round against the Panthers with a five-game takedown of the Flyers.
larry.brooks@nypost.com