It was so close to being over that the Garden creaked with pressure, it audibly ached with the notion of the summer coming, the Rangers retreating into the offseason and the place going still.
But then it was all released in a quick burst, a blur of motion that ended with rookie Chris Kreider tipping in a great cross-ice feed from Rick Nash, the puck bounding to the back of the net, the horn sounding on the Rangers’ 4-3, Game 4 overtime thriller of this Eastern Conference semifinal Thursday night, prolonging the Blueshirts’ season for at least one more game, tomorrow afternoon in Boston.
“It wasn’t on my stick a very long time,” Kreider said, his team now down 3-1 in this best-of-seven series. “Nash kind of used me as a backstop, and that’s what great players do.”
This game was not a testament to how much the Rangers have grown as a team, but how much resolve they have in the locker room. They were outplayed for the majority of the 67:03, but no matter the deficit, they did not roll over.
They were playing with a slightly revamped lineup, as former star center Brad Richards was made a healthy scratch, as was Arron Asham, the replacements coming in the form of grinding forwards Kris Newbury and Micheal Haley.
In addition, top-four defenseman Anton Stralman was out injured, replaced by 39-year-old Roman Hamrlik and the team basically playing the second half of the game with five defensemen.
So this was not the same Rangers team that lost the first three games of this series, as there was a bit more punch in the group, from top to bottom. Maybe that old saying about working hard to create your own luck actually came true.
“It was a great game for us and the type of win we needed to get back on track,” defenseman Dan Girardi said. “There is no negativity in the room. We’re not worrying about anything else that is going on. We are very positive in the room and we knew we just had to win one game.”
It surely wasn’t looking like that was going to happen through the first 28 minutes. The Rangers were down 2-0 and struggling to find any sense of sustained offense. Then Carl Hagelin lifted a backhand that was deflected by Johnny Boychuk, the change of direction fooling Boston goalie Tuukka Rask and making him fall to his rear in a heap as the puck bubbled by him, cutting the lead in half and giving the Rangers life.
“I lost my balance,” Rask said, “and the rest [is] history.”
The Blueshirts were still down 2-1 when the third period started, but just 75 seconds after the puck dropped, Derek Stepan picked the pocket of Bruins All-Star defenseman Zdeno Chara and beat Rask on a wrap-around, tying the game and making the hope of one more game seem reasonable.
“It certainly gave us life,’’ Stepan said. “We talk about it quite a bit throughout the playoffs, scoring the timely goal. Because we’re certainly getting the timely save.”
Ah yes, the saves, almost all 37 of them from Henrik Lundqvist being of the highest quality, keeping the Rangers in it even after he surrendered one to Tyler Seguin on the Bruins’ power play at the 8:06 mark of the third.
Yet just 1:54 after Seguin’s goal, Brian Boyle tied it up for the Rangers with a power-play tally — believe it, it’s true — and then came the overtime, came Kreider’s heroics, and came at least one more game for the Rangers this season.
“I still think we need to keep getting to another level,” coach John Tortorella said. “They’re a tough team, they’re defending pretty hard. But we stuck with it and we found a way to win a game.”
bcyrgalis@nypost.com