NHL

Rangers rue day, fall to ‘Canes in OT

This was the winter anti-classic, today’s matinee at the Garden in which the Rangers and Hurricanes slogged through a game with the entertainment value about as limited as the scoring.

And this 2-1 Carolina overtime victory on Ray Whitney’s backhand goal at 3:45 served as a reminder that nothing much is new in the new year for the impotent Blueshirts, who have been limited to two goals or fewer in eight of the last nine at the Garden (1-5-3 at home in that span) and 22 of the last 29 overall.

As if a reminder is needed for Christopher Higgins, who sent a couple of gimme opportunities wide in the first and is enmeshed in an 11-game drought following earlier scoreless streaks of 14 and 10 games; or for Sean Avery, who has gone 18 straight without a goal and was entirely ineffective in 11:22 yesterday; or for Ales Kotalik, who has failed to score in the last 21 and was inept on the point.

“I’ve never had a stretch like this. It would almost be comical if it wasn’t,” said Higgins, who has scored four goals on 104 shots. “I’m trying to work my [butt] off but I know that I’m not doing everything I need to do.”

The Rangers played a reasonably solid game against the team that’s buried in the NHL basement. They took the body, won a majority of battles, played well without the puck. They created more than enough chances to put the game away, except there is no such thing as creating more than enough chances for this gang that either can’t shoot straight or shoots straight into the goaltender.

“We held them to single-digit scoring chances against and generated offense, but we can’t be satisfied with generating scoring chances, we have to score,” said coach John Tortorella, whose team’s lone goal was scored by Marian Gaborik. “You try and stay patient, you try and stay patient, but we lost a point simply because we don’t bury a couple of our chances. We have to get someone to step up and score a goal other than Gabby, and that’s not just one other guy. We’ve got to get at least two other guys scoring.”

With the degree of difficulty the Rangers have had scoring at even strength — Gaborik’s tying backhand from in front at 9:08 of the third marked his team’s 22nd true five-on-five goal in the last 18 games — it is imperative that the power play be as formidable as it was through the first six weeks.

But the Rangers not only failed on four power plays, including a stretch early in the second when they had the man advantage for 6:00 of 8:47, they were completely disorganized, able to send only two shots on Cam Ward. The Blueshirts are 1-for-22 in five-on-four chances over the last seven games.

“We’d been pretty good on our entries lately, but we weren’t today,” said Michael Del Zotto. “Carolina did a lot of chasing, and we didn’t move the puck quickly enough to take advantage of that.

“It was very frustrating.”

The entire first half, which ended yesterday with the Rangers at 19-18-4, has been frustrating.

Imagine what it would be if not for Henrik Lundqvist, whose work in nets has propped up the Rangers in allowing them to claim nine points (3-5-3) out of the last 11 times the team hasn’t been able to get to three.