NHL

Noisy Garden silenced after Rangers collapse

STOPPED COLD: Washington goaltender Michal Neuvirth and Karl Alzner defend against the Rangers’ Brian Boyle during Game 4 of their NHL playoff series last night at the Garden. The Capitals won in double overtime, 4-3. (Anthony J. Causi)

The end couldn’t possibly look like this, could it? A fluke? A whim? A puck sitting on the ice in back of Henrik Lundqvist, the one place in Madison Square Garden — in all of Manhattan — where he wouldn’t be able to figure a way to smother it, keep it out of the goal, keep the red light from spinning, keep the Rangers’ season from sputtering?

The end couldn’t possibly sound like this, could it? In silence? After the way the 18,200 regulars had brought their varsity game to the old rink last night, making damn sure that Bruce Boudreau heard them?

Did you hear what the Garden sounded like during that ethereal, eight-minute, 23-second stretch where the Rangers had riddled the Capitals, seized a 3-0 lead, all but chased them to the bus?

“We stopped making plays,” Rangers coach John Tortorella said.

“We were clicking so well,” Brandon Dubinsky said, “and then we weren’t.”

“It’s tough,” Lundqvist whispered. “So, so tough.”

They couldn’t explain it, any of it, any better than you could on your drive home last night, on your postgame walk around the block, in those tortured minutes, or hours, between head hitting pillow and fitful sleep.

It ended 4-3, and it gave Washington a 3-to-1 lead in this best-of-seven, opening-round series, and the whole dressing room would fall in line behind the usual platitudes about trying to win one game three times, and not three games at once.

But if you had been inside the Garden last night, none if it made any sense, even as you watched it unfold.

That 3-0 lead? Not only was everyone united toward the common cause of inviting the Caps’ latest playoff collapse, there was a common enemy, too.

And the Garden cleared its throats and opened its lungs and tapped chatty old Bruce Boudreau on the shoulder.

“CAN YOU HEAR US?!?!” the people chanted.

“CAN YOU HEAR US?!?!” they roared.

“CAN YOU HEAR US?!?!” they sang.

It was glorious, and it was gripping, and if it felt too good to last . . . well, it was. In the final days of the regular season, a lot of hockey sages warned that the 3-0 lead is the most dangerous in hockey, inspiring the kind of hubris that had allowed the Rangers to rally to beat the Bruins in a had-to-have-it classic.

And so, in a shocking, sickening 9 ½-minute stretch of the third period, with the crowd already in the tunnels in their minds, on the bridges in their hearts, the Caps provided an additional, unwanted bit of corroborative testimony. Bang! Alexander Semin. Bang! Marcus Johansson. Bang!Johansson again.

And it was 3-3.

And the night was already starting to slither toward the macabre.

“We struggled a little bit,” Tortorella said. “We looked nervous. They surged on us.”

He shook his head. So did you.

“We got beat by a goal that is a nothing goal.”

That was the galling coup de grace. The Garden was still primed to blow, still eager to explode. The people? They could wait all night. Two overtimes? Three? Six? More puck for the buck. They’d stick around for all of it.

And after watching Lundqvist’s acrobatics, after seeing him stone Alex Ovechkin on a breakaway, they knew he would keep anything in front of him out of danger.

It was the one that trickled behind that he couldn’t contend with. Jason Chimera took a shot that was easily blocked. Marian Gaborik tried to clear it, couldn’t, and worse, he nudged it behind Lundqvist, right on Chimera’s stick. A nothing goal.

Nothing goal that meant everything. That rendered the Garden mute, an eerie climax to a shattering evening. That shoved the Rangers to the brink of the abyss. That sent the Caps into a joyous chorus of celebration. And filled the tunnels and bridges with cars overstuffed with angst and agony. The Rangers had been 29-0-0 this season while leading after two periods.

So much for that. So much for the game. So much for a loud night of celebration that one minute was perfect in every way.

And the next . . .

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com