MONTREAL — He would if he could.
Derek Stepan would play if he could in the Rangers’ potential clinching Game 5 in Montreal on Tuesday night, four days after undergoing surgery for the broken jaw he sustained on Brandon Prust’s hit 2:55 into the first period of last Thursday’s Game 3 at the Garden.
Of course he would.
He would play in the Rangers’ bid to advance to the Stanley Cup Final even while having been limited to a soft diet for the last five days, even while wearing the somewhat cumbersome and required full facial protection he did at the morning skate.
Of course he would.
And he did. And there he was, right in the center of things when the puck dropped on the Rangers’ first shot at advancing to the Stanley Cup final for the first time in 20 years.
There he was, Stepan between linemates Chris Kreider and Rick Nash, his return giving the Rangers their full complement of forwards for the first time since the sixth shift of Game 1, when Derick Brassard went down with an upper-body injury.
“If you can walk you can play,” Brian Boyle told The Post following the Blueshirts’ morning skate, hours before they attempted to eliminate the Canadiens. “And there are a lot of guys in here that are having trouble walking.
“But you still try. You still play. That’s what we’re taught. That’s what we live.”
Stepan, who participated fully in the skate while rejoining Kreider and Nash in line rushes, required medical clearance to return. No one within the Rangers organization would knowingly put him — or any athlete — in harm’s way by sending him on the ice without due diligence.
“The only way he’s going to play is if he gets full medical clearance,” said coach Alain Vigneault. “That’s not going to be up to him.
“I couldn’t give you the full dynamics of it. I know we’ve got three doctors that are here that have obviously been talking to him since the operation,” Vigneault said. “To get into the specifics, I couldn’t tell you. I mean, they’re going to talk between the player and the doctors and obviously our [athletic trainer] and they’re going to make the call.”
Prior to Saturday’s Game 4, Stepan had never missed a match since the start of his NHL career in 2010-11, playing in 294 regular-season and 54 playoff games. He had played through painful bruises incurred from blocking shots. Last year, he didn’t miss a shift in the Rangers’ second-round Game 5 elimination match in Boston despite sustaining a nasty gash in his jaw and mouth early in the contest.
“You recognize it for sure when a teammate goes onto the ice in pain or is doing everything he can out there despite being limited by having an injury,” Ryan McDonagh said. “We all can identify and we all have a lot of respect for what that means to the group.
“When you’re in that situation, somehow you mentally block out the pain and do whatever you can,” the defenseman told The Post. “It’s the mentality of wanting to be out there, battling with your teammates. You do it for the guys in here.
“And with our situation, one win away from competing for the Stanley Cup, everyone wants to do whatever is possible to get us there.”
One game. One victory from returning to the Final for the first time in 20 years. This would not be just another game, hardly that, but the Rangers were trying to prepare as if it were just another night on the pond.
“I’m approaching it from a competitive standpoint,” McDonagh said. “We’re competing against this team in this game and I want to win it just like any other game I play in.
“Our group hates to lose.”
Stepan, who normally wears a visor, wore a plastic shield and plexiglass guard to protect his jaw. A plate had been inserted into the jaw during surgery to stabilize it so that it stays in line and does not become displaced while healing. Contact and body-checks given and taken in a playoff game would not normally be part of the recovery process.
This is neither a normal time nor a normal occupation.
“This time of year, you don’t have time to be 100 percent,” said Marty St. Louis, playing through pain of a very different and more personal nature.
Last year, with his team facing Game 6 extinction in the final, Boston’s Patrice Bergeron played with a broken rib, torn rib cartilage, a separated shoulder and what would be diagnosed as a punctured lung immediately following the Bruins’ defeat to the Blackhawks.
“It hurts to play hurt, but it hurts even more not to be able to play,” said Boyle. “It’s not about stroking anyone’s ego. So much of the dynamic goes unsaid, but it is never unappreciated.
“Guys know what the next guy is going through,” said No. 22, who leads all forwards in the playoffs with 25 blocked shots. “When you go through a run like this, it builds to something that you can’t really describe.
“But I guess it comes down to sacrifice. We sacrifice for one another.”