Larry Brooks

Larry Brooks

NHL

Time for low-key Rangers to man up in Game 7

PHILADELPHIA — One night on Broadway. One game that will in large measure define the Rangers and the Rangers’ season. Game 7 against the Flyers at the Garden on Wednesday.

Game 6 on Tuesday? You mean the game in which the Rangers could have wrapped up this opening round but instead fell on their faces after a collective pratfall in which even Henrik Lundqvist went down and out? You mean the 5-2 Flyers’ victory that was 4-0 by the end of the second?

That game? What game?

“What’s that called? ‘Amnesia?’ ” Martin St. Louis wanted to know, asking and answering his own rhetorical question. “That’s what we need for Game 7.”

The Rangers are going to need a whole lot more than amnesia in order to reverse the Game 6 horror show in which Philadelphia’s best players were miles and miles ahead of the Rangers’ signature athletes, from Wayne Simmonds recording a hat trick while Rick Nash remained scoreless to Steve Mason outplaying Lundqvist by a wide margin in nets.

“They did everything better than us,” said Lundqvist, yanked after allowing four goals in 40 minutes and thus pulled from a playoff game for the first time since Game 6 in the 2009 first-round series in which the Rangers blew a 3-1 lead to the Caps before losing Game 7 in D.C. “Even goaltending.”

It is set up now for a dramatic finish to a series that for the most part has lacked drama. Story lines have been muted. The Rangers work as hard not to be charismatic as they do on the ice. They wouldn’t say “cheese” if they had a mouthful.

The level of hockey had been rather ordinary, but then, this is a series between the clubs that finished 12th and 13th respectively in the overall league standings, so perhaps this should have been expected, especially under the umbrella of a schedule in which just four games were played in 10 days.

The Rangers have the fewest amount of points of any team to hold home-ice advantage in a series.

Indeed, there were four first-round series — St. Louis-Chicago; San Jose-Los Angeles; Colorado-Minnesota; Tampa Bay-Montreal — in which both teams finished with better records than both New York and Philadelphia, highlighting the inequities of the new playoff format that gets the NHL its bracket at the expense of the integrity of the competition.

But the Flyers did raise the bar in their Game 6 blowout victory. The ante was raised and the Flyers raised their level of passion and intensity. The Blueshirts couldn’t quite match it. And their best players were anything but.

Ryan McDonagh, who has had a pedestrian series, struggled again. Dan Girardi, who has been sturdy throughout, committed two egregious turnovers off which the Flyers capitalized to score their first two goals, the first on a power play at 7:08 of the first period, the next just 1:32 into the second period.

Lundqvist, who started well, couldn’t maintain it, and indeed committed a gaffe that directly led to the 3-0 game — The King also a victim of indecision, unable to commit to leaving the crease to play the puck before retreating and being beaten by Erik Gustafsson at 14:17 of the second.

Lundqvist’s inability to commit on that one indeed matched his team’s failure to match the Flyers’ commitment in this one. After the opening 10 minutes, there was no doubt which team was hungrier and which team was more committed to doing the dirty work necessary for victory.

And then, Rick Nash, still scoreless through six games of this series, and who will go into Game 7 with one goal in 18 playoff games as a Ranger. Again, it is never on one player — not Nash, not Lundqvist, not McDonagh — but the Blueshirts traded for No. 61 for games and moments like these.

You watch Chicago and Jonathan Toews rises to the occasion. You watch L.A., and it’s Anze Kopitar. In Columbus for Pittsburgh, it was Evgeni Malkin.

But for the Rangers, not yet from Nash.

“I’m trying my best … I’m trying my best to help the team win,” Nash told The Post. “They’re not going in, so of course it’s frustrating.

“It’s very frustrating.”

The power play, choked through the neutral zone, was dysfunctional, going 0-for-5 after generating two shots on their first three advantages while the score was no worse than 2-0. The Blueshirts will go into Game 7 having failed on their last 20 power plays after scoring on three of their first eight in the series. Meanwhile, the Flyers went 2-for-2 on the power play and go into Game 7 firing at 6-for-18 a man up.

Now it is time for the Rangers to man up. It is time for the Rangers’ leading men to lead. Time for Game 7 on Broadway. Time for the Blueshirts to step up.

Time for short memories … or a long, long summer.