NHL

Rangers took step backward with loss to Bruins

BOSTON — The Rangers saved their best of the series for the last of the series, and that wasn’t enough, either.

One year to the day after their 2012 elimination by the Devils in the conference finals, the Rangers were eliminated by the Bruins in the conference semifinals.

Unhappy anniversary to them.

The Rangers took a step backward this season, and they know it. They could not maintain the standard they established last season. They were ill-suited to the Black-and-Blueshirts that fit a different cast so snugly a year ago.

“I expected more from us and I hoped for more,” Henrik Lundqvist said after the 3-1 empty-net-abetted elimination defeat in which the Blueshirts played with passion and pushed the Bruins to the finish. “This was a different season.

“Last year was just a different feeling. This game is about winning. When you win, there’s one feeling. When you’re not winning, there’s another feeling.”

Lundqvist has one year remaining on his contract before he can become a free agent. Yesterday, moments after his eighth NHL season had ended far short of the objective, was not the time for the goaltender to project the future.

Yet, know this: Everything depends on the 31-year-old Lundqvist re-upping in New York. Everything depends on the Rangers giving their franchise player every piece of gold he desires — if it’s the max, it’s the max — in order to keep him from seeking silver somewhere else.

Everything will change if Lundqvist declines to sign an extension this summer and instead waits it out and plays it out next season.

“The next couple of days you’re going to analyze things, try to figure out what went wrong and what you can do better,” said The King, who goes into the summer with a 30-37 career playoff record. “But right now, it’s just an empty feeling and disappointment.”

Rick Nash, the player management projected as the transformative goal-scorer the club lacked in last year’s tournament, did not fill that role.

It certainly is not on No. 61 alone, but the Rangers had every reason to expect more from Nash in the playoffs, in this round and most certainly last night.

Nash had two shots on net in the match, both in the third period, one from the right boards and the other from the trigger position off a right faceoff win. He was knocked down with impunity twice in the final 7:30 by the menacing Milan Lucic without baring his teeth in response.

What we saw from the Big Easy this spring is he lacks a mean streak. He finished his first playoffs in New York with one goal in 12 games.

Look, you can talk all you want about the bottom of Bruins lineup chewing up the Rangers, but it is equally true that the top of the Blueshirts’ lineup — or what was expected to be the top of the lineup — did not play well enough.

“One of the big things of this series … it’s a big part of my job to get your top players to play consistently, and I couldn’t do that,” said John Tortorella, the coach now and most certainly into next season.

Tortorella addressed the elimination and season with equanimity, except for the singular flight of fancy in which he bemoaned the absences of the injured Marc Staal and Ryane Clowe in calling “our Lucic in Clowe … and our [Zdeno] Chara in Staal,” but OK, he gets some poetic license here.

The Rangers are in state of flux. They don’t have the same crew as a year ago. It’s a mistake to coach it that way. Of course the Rangers need to be able to grind because every successful team does, but this team was at its best against the Bruins in open ice and not in tight quarters. The team’s talent needs to breathe.

They weren’t good enough in this series and they didn’t prepare properly for it either. Until Tuukka Rask fell down midway through Game 4, the Rangers never played as if the ante had been raised from Round 1. That’s the adjustment “not on the ice” to which Tortorella cryptically referred after Game 1.

“It almost felt like we were waiting for something good to happen,” Lundqvist said. “It just took too long for something good to happen.”

It wasn’t all bad, not close. Only two teams in the NHL have won at least one playoff round each of the last two years — the Kings and the Rangers.

Still, it wasn’t good enough. The Rangers know it.

Unhappy anniversary to them.