If the Rangers can force management to rethink its course approaching the Feb. 26 trade deadline, they’ve got 13 games in which to do it. Thirteen games to convince management that this indeed is a group worth keeping intact, or even bolstering, rather than applying a facelift.
“It’s clear what situation we’re in with the deadline coming up,” Marc Staal, in his 11th season on Broadway and second in club seniority to Henrik Lundqvist, told The Post following the club’s welcome-back practice. “If we play well as a group and win some games, maybe that could change some people’s minds about who we are.
“But I’ve been here long enough to know that the Rangers are always going to do what they think is best to put a winning team on the ice. I don’t think that’s going to change. I don’t think it’s about loyalty to any one individual or a group of players. I don’t think it’s about owing anyone anything.
“The loyalty is in trying to win the Stanley Cup, and that’s the way it should be.”
Pending resumption of the schedule Tuesday following the all-star break, the Blueshirts were one point out of the first and second wild card spots while disadvantaged in games in hand but only three points clear of last place in the division. In other words, sitting on a teeter-totter.
“We’re all so close,” said coach Alain Vigneault. “I’m not at all concerned with the white noise that surrounds any trade period. The players are professionals whose responsibility is to focus on their jobs. It’s the coaching staff’s job to get them to focus on the right things.”
The Blueshirts have 55 points in 50 games. Vigneault affirmed that it has generally taken 96 points to get into the tournament.
“It’s probably going to be close to that,” said the coach, whose team would need 41 points the rest of the way to hit that marker after going 6-9-1 in the 16 matches leading into the break.
“We’ve had enough time off,” Vigneault said in reference to the three-day Christmas hiatus, the four-day bye period and the four-day all-star break compressed into a 37-day stretch. “It’s time to play.”
The top of the stretch beckons with a Thursday match at the Garden against the Maple Leafs that precedes a two-game hop to Nashville and Dallas. There really is no time to waste for the league’s 20th-overall club.
“Thirty-two games might seem like a lot, but it isn’t,” Staal said. “In the position we’re in, it’s going to be a fight right to the end. We’ve been in a position the last number of years where we’ve been ahead at this stage and so we know how hard it is for teams to make up ground, even if it’s a small margin.
“We have to be consistently good and be able to consistently pick up points. We have to win games. We certainly can’t have another bad stretch or else it will be uphill the rest of the way. I’m sure we’re all aware of that.
“Everything ramps up now. The urgency is high. It’s our job to go out and perform. We can’t be concerned about the trade deadline. That’s management’s job. As players, we can only control our own performance. That’s our focus.
“If we do our jobs, everything else will fall into place.”