The center position has become a black hole for the Rangers that is threatening to swallow the team alive.
And no one, no one, has fallen deeper into that abyss than Brad Richards, who hasn’t come close to resembling the player he always has been and must be in order for the Blueshirts to salvage something from this disappointing muddle of a season.
“I don’t even have the word to describe how wearing this has been,” Richards told The Post after the Rangers’ 3-2 shootout defeat to the Capitals last night at the Garden. “Mentally, it’s been pretty tough.
“I’ve been taking a beating.”
That’s a self-inflicted beating to which Richards, who arrived on Broadway a year ago with the portfolio as a leader and a pro’s pro, was referring. The mind is connected to the legs, the legs are connected to the hands, and neither the legs nor the hands have been able to produce at anything resembling a satisfactory rate.
It appears as if Richards is as stuck as his team, which did somehow creep into eighth place with the losers’ point but failed to serve notice that better days are anywhere close to right around the corner.
“I’ve never been through anything like this in my career,” the 12-year-veteran said. “I’m trying to cope with it, I’m trying to learn from it but I’ve never experienced anything like this.
“When you’re an offensive guy, you have to produce.”
There was an assist last night, his first point in the last seven games, a feed from the left point to Derek Stepan down low on the left side before No. 21 whipped a bad angle shot that Braden Holtby bungled into a five-hole goal that gave the Rangers a five-on-three power play goal at 18:03 of the first and lifted the club into a 2-2 tie.
But that was about the end of it for Richards, who has recorded seven points (2-5) in his last 19 games, 10 (2-8) in his last 24 and 16 (5-11) overall.
“I’ve played some games where I’ve come out of them wondering how the puck hasn’t gone in on some plays, where I’ve been involved but didn’t come away with anything,” said Richards, who got 19:58 of ice but was awarded just one full shift in overtime. “But this game, I didn’t create nearly enough.”
Stepan has emerged as the Rangers’ first-line center. Beyond him, however, the Blueshirts are a Donut Team. Brian Boyle, the third-line pivot, not only has scored only one goal (with one assist) on the year, he has been on the ice for three Rangers goals scored all season.
Beyond that, not one of the three centers plays a particularly up-tempo game. The two games over the last two weeks in which the Rangers played with the most pace were the pair that Richards missed after being sent into the boards by the Sabres’ Patrick Kaleta and in which J.T. Miller moved from wing to the middle.
Coach John Tortorella is more comfortable using Miller on the flank as he learns the NHL game, but when the 20-year-old freshman returns from the wrist injury that sidelined him last night, the coach may have to shift him to center in order to create pace.
Regardless, the Rangers will need Richards to at least resemble himself over the final 17 games. They will need him to create.
“I go home, I go over it in my head every day, but I don’t have an answer,” Richards said. “I wish I did.
“The thing I hang on to is that we’re still in it and I know I can help a lot more than I have,” Richards said. “That’s what I’m looking at. That’s a good thing.”
That’s the only way the Rangers will be able to escape the black hole threatening to swallow the season alive.