NHL

Pressure style has Rangers’ Redden in the zone

If Wade Redden looks like a different player in his second season with the Rangers, and he does, much of the improvement can be credited to the fact that he is now playing in a system that maximizes his skills as a skater and puck mover while minimizing his deficiencies in defensive zone coverage and reading the rush.

Redden might as well have been on an island last year, so lost was he playing coach Tom Renney’s safety-first system, in which the defense invariably seemed to be backing up or battling for survival in its own end of the ice.

But now, six games into Year Two on Broadway, which continues tonight at the Garden against the Kings, Redden appears liberated by the puck-pressure system installed by head coach John Tortorella.

“You have to be smart and be able to make quick decisions in order not to get caught when you have three men deep,” Redden said following yesterday’s practice. “But this way we’re not in our own end nearly as much, so that makes it a lot easier for the defense to play.

“Don’t get me wrong; it’s demanding and takes a lot out of you getting up in the play all the time the way Torts wants, but it’s not like dealing with all that gray area when you’re backing up and there’s a large gap between the D and the [backchecking] forwards.

“You’re not in no-man’s land this way. You’re either on them in the neutral zone or you’re in the play. You don’t have forwards coming at you at 100 mph.”

Plus, the Rangers are now loaded with forwards who can carry the puck out of harm’s way on the controlled breakout. That means the defensemen don’t have the puck on their own sticks nearly as much in attempting to navigate out of their own end.

“We’ve got so many skilled forwards who can wheel with it, you want to get the puck into their hands,” said Redden, who has been on the ice for only one even-strength goal-against in compiling a plus-four rating. “I know I just want to get them the puck quickly and move up in support.”

The six-year, $39 million contract is still there, of course, but disproportionate as it may be, no one will harp on it if Redden can just be a competent player. No one ever expected Redden to be the 2003 Scott Niedermayer just because general manager Glen Sather decided to pay him as if he was, but that doesn’t mean anyone expected him to be Dave Pichette, either.

“I don’t think Wade was in good shape when I came in last year, but he came into camp in good shape, which we talked about,” said Tortorella, whose team is seeking its sixth straight victory tonight. “He’s been harder on the puck, more willing to take a hit to make a play, more consistent in closing on the puck quickly.”

And he’s in a system that plays to his strengths rather than exposes his weaknesses.

“If you control the neutral zone, which we are trying to do with our D up, it takes away a lot of different coverage looks, so that has to make it easier on defensemen,” Tortorella said. “With the personnel we have here now — which wasn’t the case, I don’t think, when I got here — this style should help all of our defensemen be better.”

larry.brooks@nypost.com