NHL

Garden’s other guys skate on

The final flurry was over, the puck was poked out of the zone, and soon enough the happy sound of a buzzer’s groan was filling Madison Square Garden, bleeding soon enough into one final, satisfying roar.

The Rangers had beaten the Capitals 3-2, had swept the weekend, had solidified their vapor-lock grip on the top spot in the Eastern Conference, had sent 18,200 people home happy for the 18th time in 26 games at the Garden this year.

It has been a hell of a week in the sporting life of this city. The Giants won the Super Bowl and now wherever they go — basketball games, restaurants, department stores, talk shows — they receive standing ovations and swoons. Jeremy Lin has performed CPR on the Knicks’ season, and tomorrow night Amar’e Stoudemire will return from the sad task of burying his brother. The Yankees are on the verge of exiling A.J. Burnett, probably to Pittsburgh.

And the Rangers win just about every day.

As a city, New York might want to think about hopping a plane to Las Vegas right about now.

“We look around and we see what things are like here,” said goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, who borrowed Lin’s “MVP” chants yesterday and turned aside 24 of 26 shots. “It’s impossible to look at what the Giants did and not think at least a little bit about what we have ahead of ourselves, too. The possibilities that are there for us in the playoffs … it’s fun to think about that, even without losing focus of what we have to take care of every day.”

That was no guarantee of a Canyon of Heroes reprise, because that isn’t Lundqvist’s way, and it isn’t the Rangers’ way. Quietly, steadily, relentlessly, they have dominated their side of the NHL for months, doing it with little flash and dash because that isn’t the personality of the team, and with little fanfare because as always, they are routinely swallowed up by the attention paid to the Yankees, the Giants, the Jets, the Knicks.

“Just as we like it,” Lundqvist said with a smile.

“This is a team, there isn’t a guy who carries us,” coach John Tortarella said. “Everyone chips in.”

Yesterday, that meant a goal from grinding left wing Brandon Prust, who scored short-handed 6 minutes and 26 seconds into the third period — and that turned out to be the difference in the game. It was the first time Prust had splashed the net since Oct. 20 in Calgary, a span of 48 games and 115 days.

“No problem,” Prust said with a wide grin. “I was sure I wouldn’t go forever without another goal.” Then the grin widened. “Pretty sure, anyway.”

Prust is a Ranger who embraces the collegial relationship they share with the Garden’s other tenants, a regular at Knicks games who tweeted on Opening Day: “They put me behind the Celtics’ bench to keep an eye on things.” Prust has watched the Lin-fueled fervor build around the Knicks and is grateful for it, and not only as a guy who, like most fans, was disappointed with the Knicks’ first 21 games.

“You can feel the way the city responds to all their teams. It’s passionate and it’s supportive,” Prust said. “But there’s something about us and the Knicks, maybe because we play at the same time of the year, but the energy and the buzz on the streets is just fantastic. And the way they’ve been playing, it just lifts that energy to a higher level. It’s something to see.”

Of course, it also shortens a civic attention span that is already predisposed to overlook hockey whenever something else wanders in its line of sight. If that bothers the Rangers — who have given the Garden over the past four months precisely what Lin has given it the last nine days, only to far less worldwide acclaim — they aren’t saying.

“We’re just coming to work every day, having fun,” said Ryan McDonagh, whose second-period goal broke a 1-1 tie, “and trying to make our fans as happy as we can.”

They have done that. They have made certain that the Garden is a very happy place, and not only on the nights when it’s overwhelmed with Lin-sanity.