Your eyes tell you that the Rangers are all but finished, outplayed decisively one period after another, one game after another.
You see them on the ropes, taking punches from a fresher opponent growing more confident by the moment, you watch them trying to follow the game plan, grimly trying to move forward like the late great Smokin’ Joe Frazier, and you wait … you wait for the haymaker that’s going to knock them down and then the next one that’s going to knock out the Black-and-Blueshirts for good.
But sometimes believing is not in what you see, it is in what you know … and what you know after 100 games of this season that began in Stockholm the first week of October and is now distilled to a best-of-three neighborhood street fight on the eve of Memorial Day Weekend is that it would be a terrible mistake to underestimate the Rangers.
Would be a terrible mistake to underestimate the Rangers’ heart.
You can quantify shots, attempts, blocked shots, turnovers, faceoff results and hits. You can account for possession time and zone time to the second.
But you can’t measure heart. You can’t even really see it. You can only feel it. And for 100 games, everyone has felt the heartbeat of the Rangers, who are down to their moments of truth entering tonight’s Game 5 at the Garden in a Battle of the Hudson that is even only in the scorebooks, even if that’s the only place that really counts.
And this as well to consider: There is heart, there is resolve and then there is Henrik Lundqvist, which is sort of like having Sandy Koufax to run out to the mound three times in a seven-game series.
No one is overlooking how well Martin Brodeur has played against the Rangers. It is remarkable. The Great Brodeur is two victories away from going to the Stanley Cup final 17 years after his first trip to the ball. And while everyone keeps waiting for him to surrender the one that will tip the tide, he instead has been steadfast.
But it is Lundqvist who is the leading man here and it is Lundqvist whose cool demeanor and limitless reservoir of confidence give the Rangers more than a puncher’s chance.
“What a great opportunity we have here, 2-2 in the Eastern finals with two out of three at home,” is how the King phrased it yesterday without for a moment seeming as if he had memorized a script. “It’s an exciting time.
“It gets a more exciting game the closer and closer you get to where you want to be.”
Zen notwithstanding, it can’t keep going on this way if the ride is to end in the Canyon of Heroes and not in either Newark or in Midtown. That much is fairly obvious. They cannot simply be prey and pray for Lundqvist to save them.
The Blueshirts’ heavy legs are the price the team is paying for not taking care of business in Game 4 in DC and allowing itself to be dragged into a seven-game series against a Washington team that really wasn’t all that good or played all that well.
But nothing can be done about that now. Tonight will mark their 19th playoff game in 42 days. Somehow the Rangers have held a lead after two periods in only four of them. No breathing room in April, no breathing room in May. This though is their fate. This now is their only road map to June.
They competed so hard for so many games for so many months during the regular season, abnormally so, really, the question even before Game 1 against the Senators was whether the Rangers could kick it into the higher gear necessary for the playoffs when everyone competes that hard (well, except for the Flyers against the Devils).
Now, however, it’s not as much about whether the Rangers can kick it into a higher gear against New Jersey, but, as Brian Boyle told The Post yesterday, “I don’t even think we’re where we were … we just haven’t played that well.
“A little bit of it is a confidence thing too,” said Boyle, who simply must be better. “When we’re all going, it’s easy, but it’s been a little bit harder lately.
“Every guy needs to get back to what makes us successful.”
The Rangers need the puck. They need to play with greater composure. They need a hero up front other than the kid off the Chestnut Hill campus. Paging Broadway Brad.
But they already have Lundqvist, who will allow his teammates to keep their heads above frozen water if given even half a chance.
And they have heart. Miles and miles of it. Sometimes in the Stanley Cup playoffs, that’s what counts most of all.
larry.brooks@nypost.com