OVER IN OVERTIME: Marian Gaborik scores the game-winner past Capitals goalie Braden Holtby in triple overtime. (Reuters)
WASHINGTON — It was the other side of midnight, the Rangers and Capitals had been at it for 114:41 of hockey when Brad Richards centered the puck to Marian Gaborik.
The sniper who hadn’t scored since Game 1 of the Ottawa series snapped his wrists, sent the puck toward netminder Braden Holtby, and then … and then …
“It was like, ‘What happened?’ ” a relieved Gaborik told The Post just outside the locker room.
What happened is that Gaborik had beaten the goaltender at 14:41 of the third overtime — 54:41 of extra time — in the franchise’s longest game in 73 years to give the Rangers a 2-1 victory and 2-1 series lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals that mercifully do not continue until Saturday afternoon.
This was a night that gave way to an early morning — the match ending today at 12:14 a.m. — on which exhaustion turned to exhilaration the moment Gaborik scored.
This was a game in which the Rangers and Capitals both invested blood and sweat in Stanley Cup playoff competition at its finest, a match that was thrilling through 60 minutes, and then close to awe-inspiring with these professional athletes reaching within themselves and pushing themselves when there seemed nothing more to give, nowhere else to go.
“Usually when we score I’m so excited that I scream, but I was too tired for that,” Henrik Lundqvist said after a 45-save performance. “I was just, ‘Oh My God, Oh My God, it’s over.’
“I felt like it was never going to end.”
It ended with the Rangers’ first OT victory since April 29, 2007, after a string of seven consecutive defeats including losses in Games 2 and 4 to Ottawa in this year’s first round.
It ended with victory in the club’s longest match since Boston’s Mel (Sudden Death) Hill scored at 59:25 of OT for the Bruins on March 21, 1939, in Game 1 of the semifinals in which the Bruins’ winger scored three overtime winners in the seven-game series.
And it ended with victory marking a memorable night for Lundqvist, for Gaborik, and for this band of hockey warriors, notably featuring Ryan McDonagh (53:21 of ice time), Marc Staal (49:30), Dan Girardi (44:22), Michael Del Zotto (43:37) and Ryan Callahan, who played 41:52 up front.
There wasn’t an easy minute to be had in this battle conducted along the boards, in the corners and in front, with bodies flying off one another and in front of shots — 41 blocks by the Rangers, 40 by the equally heroic Capitals; eight by McDonagh and six by Girardi, who briefly left the match in the first OT when cut on the forehead by Lundqvist’s stick.
“We know that we’re in really good shape and if we kept going, if we kept on them and kept on them that we’d come away with the win, and we did,” Girardi said. “I think I can speak for a lot of the guys that Torts’ [coach John Tortorella’s] training camp this year was pretty tough.
“This kind of brought back some memories there, that’s why we do stuff like that, have hard practices, to be ready for double and triple OT,” the defenseman said. “We felt like we could have played for a while.”
The two regulation goals were scored 4:29 apart in the second period, Callahan beating Holtby on a power-play spinner from in front at 6:41 before John Carlson snapped a right circle drive past Lundqvist up top to the far side at 11:10.
And that was it … that was it for hours, that was it when Alexander Ovechkin, who played 35:14, rang the right post from 10 feet away on the left side five minutes into the first OT, and that was it when Mike Rupp’s right wing drive toward the empty side of the net hit Brian Boyle in the rear as the center set a screen 6:15 into the second OT.
That was it as the teams played on, yielding next to nothing, combing for 105 hits. The Capitals delivered 59 hits, 11 by Matt Hendricks including one that leveled McDonagh in the first OT, and the Rangers had 46, with nine from Boyle.
And then the puck came to Gaborik from Richards and then …
And then it happened.
larry brooks@nypost.com