NHL

Rangers open playoffs with a dud against Capitals

LOOK BEHIND YOU: Marcus Johansson scores against Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist in the second period of the Capitals’ 3-1 Game 1 victory. Johansson’s goal was one of three the Caps would score in the period. (Reuters)

WASINGTON — The Rangers are all wearing t-shirts with the message “Stay Positive” across their chests, and for the most part that’s what they were following last night’s 3-1 defeat to the Capitals in Game 1 of the first-round series.

There was much talk about having done “a lot of good things,” and that wasn’t entirely off-base regarding the match in which the Blueshirts outshot their opponents 36-30 and out-attempted them by 79-53.

But the Rangers didn’t do enough things well for enough of the time. They found themselves in more of an OK-Corral shootout than they would have preferred.

And the heart of the matter is they didn’t get quite good enough goaltending from Henrik Lundqvist, who yielded a mighty spotty third goal to put his team in the final two-goal hole and was outdone by Braden Holtby.

“It was a really bad goal,” Lundqvist said of the Jason Chimera long, bad-angle drive from the left boards that sneaked through and gave Washington a 3-1 lead at 15:07 of the second, just 46 seconds after Marcus Johansson had buried a breakaway. “I’m very disappointed; I thought I had my pad there.

“It can’t happen, but it did.”

RANGERS PLAYOFF SCHEDULE

The Rangers had pledged to stay out of the penalty box against a Caps team that led the NHL in power play efficiency, but they broke their vow just 34 seconds into the match, and then three times within a span of 7:00 bridging the second and third periods.

The first three PP’s were killed. The fourth was not, Alex Ovechkin pouncing on a ricochet off the rear boards to tie the score 1-1 at 6:59 of the second after Carl Hagelin’s wraparound at 16:44 of the first had given the Blueshirts the lead after they had weathered an opening 12-minute assault in which they were outshot 11-1.

“I thought we handled that pressure well,” said Dan Girardi, who logged 29:00 of ice. “I don’t think we were really that bad, we did a lot of things well, but we had a couple of breakdowns that we paid for.”

The Rangers’ own problematic power play came back to bite them midway through the second, with the club on a 46-second five-on-three wrapped inside a 3:02 advantage with the game tied.

“It’s a big play in the game,” Lundqvist said. “It changed a lot. It really did.”

The Blueshirts failed to make enough big plays in the game. Hagelin, who was everywhere, was stoned by Holtby on a shorthanded breakaway 1:08 into the second when a goal would have extended the club’s lead to 2-0.

And they failed to string enough plays together to establish strength on the forecheck in the offensive zone even as they did generate an acceptable number of scoring chances.

“I don’t think we had enough consecutive good shifts,” Ryan McDonagh told The Post. “There weren’t enough times that we put one good shift after another.

“We need to focus on keeping the momentum longer.”

Girardi and McDonagh were paired most of the night as coach John Tortorella attempted to get his shutdown tandem on the ice as often as possible against Ovechkin. It was sure a surprise when Johansson got behind the pair to accept a home run feed up the middle from Steve Oleksy before beating Lundqvist on his breakaway.

“We have to know he’s behind us,” Girardi told The Post. “It’s not really acceptable.”

The Rangers generated a fair amount of traffic in front of Holtby, who was quick and precise. Rick Nash fired eight shots from all angles — one a dandy from the left circle that Holtby denied with the right shoulder on the 5-on-4 following the 5-on-3 — among his 16 attempts.

But even as the Blueshirts tested Holtby, even as they at times swarmed, they did not establish a ground game and did not play what the Rangers believe is typically their kind of game.

Their next chance comes with Game 2 tomorrow afternoon. They can stay positive as much as they want. But they and their goaltender will have to be better in order to leave D.C. with a split.