NHL

Rangers brawler Boogaard unable to do his job

This isn’t really about Derek Boogaard even though it is, but if Friday’s calamitous night at the Garden doesn’t expose the fatal flaw in the concept of hiring the biggest, toughest, most feared puncher pound for pound in the NHL to act a deterrent, then nothing does and nothing will.

Seriously. We’re not assigning Boogaard blame for anything, and we’re most certainly not blaming him for Colby Armstrong’s crushing and penalized second-period hit on Marian Gaborik on which the Rangers’ indispensable sniper suffered a separated shoulder.

We’re not blaming Boogaard for Dion Phaneuf barreling into Henrik Lundqvist early in the first period, either, though preventing such blatant nonsense was specifically listed as one of No. 94’s most important responsibilities by Glen Sather when the general manager hired hockey’s Primo Carnera as a free agent on July 1.

The idea a fourth-line player — who gets a mere handful of fourth-line shifts a night and who is essentially in the lineup to punch it out with the opposition’s fourth-line heavyweight — can be a deterrent is flawed. The idea this presence will create more skating room for his team’s stars is misguided.

It’s even more misguided when it comes to Boogaard, who is so feared as a puncher that very few of the league’s heavyweights are even willing to drop the gloves against him, and that includes the (almost always) willing Colton Orr, who wanted no part of the 6-foot-7, 285-pound Rangers galoot on Friday.

Think about it. When Orr played that role for the Rangers, did that ever stop an opponent from abusing Jaromir Jagr or running Lundqvist?

It was different back in the day when Dave Semenko rode shotgun for Wayne Gretzky, different because it was another time, different because Semenko often skated on the same line as No. 99, and thus presented a clear and present danger to foes who dared breathe on The Great One.

Today, the deterrent comes in the form of team toughness and a pack mentality. That’s it. It comes in the form of immediate reprisal by players consistently finishing their checks against the opposition’s most talented players. Then again, it helps if you can catch them, but that’s a different story.

The heavyweight as a deterrent is an anachronism, proven so for the latest time before our very eyes Friday night. Unfortunately, the Rangers have invested $1.625M in cap space to be lost in time.

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Another week in which the puritanical NHL continued to send the message that references to sex deserve harsh and immediate punishment while hits or attempted hits to the head are excused or ignored.

It’s Sixth Avenue acting as the MPAA, shrugging and slapping a PG-13 on a film including a thousand dismembered bodies, but an X on a movie that might include a flash of uncovered skin.

James Wisniewski
‘s comically infantile lewd gesture aimed at Sean Avery
on Monday deserved a fine, a reprimand, and a warning not to do it again, much the same way the league handled the Senators’ Nick Foligno
‘s blindside hit to the head of Patrick Dwyer
of the Hurricanes on Thursday.

Wisniewski surely didn’t deserve to do time, and he most surely didn’t deserve a suspension during the same week in which the NHL studiously ignored the Sabres’ Patrick Kaleta
‘s unconcealed attempted head-butt of the Devils’ Travis Zajac
on Wednesday.

Kaleta, a notorious headhunter (Think he would ever duke it out with Boogaard? Hah!), wasn’t penalized on the play that occurred in front of the Devils’ bench and should have been in plain sight of at least one of the referees and one of the linesmen. Rule 48.2: “A double-minor penalty shall be imposed on a player who attempts to head-butt an opponent.”

No call was made that night and no discipline was imposed the following day by the league’s MPAA board, which was content upon reviewing the audio that no bad words were said that might have offended everyone rushing out to see Bambi.

Ryan Miller
couldn’t agree more.

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Meanwhile, it’s time for Avery to stop playing the victim’s card he dropped most recently Monday on Long Island, suggesting after the game that the league would not punish Wisniewski but would have sentenced him to solitary confinement had he committed such an act.

Avery finally has reached the point where he’s treated as equitably as possible by the NHL’s on-ice officials, and even by Colin Campbell
, witness the appropriate lack of a suspension for No. 16’s pair of wicked two-hand chops across the Leafs’ Mike Komisarek
‘s skates on Friday.

Beyond that, as inappropriate as it may have been for commissioner Gary Bettman
to suspend Avery for those six games and require he attend anger management, the sentence proved a career-saver for Warren Street Sean, and at the time he acknowledged as much to friends.

Avery is the league’s greatest lightning rod, greatest used in an alternate sense as it would be applied to, say, Alex Ovechkin
and Sidney Crosby
, a polarizing pair unto themselves.

It makes no sense for him to stand under a tree holding a key flying a kite in the middle of a thunderstorm, no sense at all.

larry.brooks@nypost.com