Rangers have yet to play, despite season starting

THIS was a performance that wasn’t worth even a 24-hour wait, let alone the 313 days between appearances at the Garden by the Rangers.

But then, this wouldn’t even count as an appearance by the Blueshirts — who pulled a no-show in the season opener, losing 4-0 to an Islanders team that essentially had a 60-minute stroll through the park on Thursday.

If you’re looking for an excuse for this debacle — in which Igor Shesterkin allowed goals on the third, fifth and seventh shots he faced while his teammates lollygagged — don’t bother.

There are no excuses for the Rangers, spared the indignity of being booed out of the building only because customers are not permitted at the Garden. This was an amateurish performance by a team that was not prepared to compete against the conference finalists.

Check that. The Rangers were not prepared to compete, period. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you’d prefer to hear it from David Quinn — who, come to think of it, bears far more responsibility for this than I do.

“I thought we went back to doing some of things we were doing in the bubble,” the coach said, issuing quite the indictment. “Cheating the game … there are zero shortcuts in this game, zero shortcuts. We were playing hope hockey.

“We just weren’t prepared to play the right way. We allowed them to get into position all night long because we didn’t skate. We didn’t play with the right intentions. There wasn’t a lot of good tonight, that’s for sure.”

It is well-nigh impossible to evaluate the Rangers’ structure or system or willingness to play simplified, straight-line hockey out of this fiasco — through which one player after another committed the most fundamental blunders.

Failed cross-ice passes, careless turnovers, failure to compete for loose pucks, inability or unwillingness to win one-onones and a lack of discipline were routine in what became the first opening night shutout defeat since the dreadful 1998-99 squad dropped a 1-0 match to the Flyers

Shesterkin wobbled in the first period, perhaps not at fault for any of the three that beat him within a span of 10:58 but unable to make a big save once Brock Nelson scored from the slot on the power play at 2:33. A two-on-one followed 1:19 later on which Anders Lee whipped one in from the left side on a play that began behind the Islanders net. And then the splendid Mat Barzal beat the goaltender up top from the right side sneaking his way through an escort.

An empty building meant that Shesterkin, the apple of everyone’s eye during his debut run last season, did not have to suffer what would have been the inevitable chants of “Henrik … Henrik.” But the 25-year-old Russian showed spine through the final 40 minutes and asserted himself with a handful of wonderful stops. That was one of the few positives of the night, though it should be assumed that Alex Georgiev will get the nod for Saturday’s rematch on Broadway.

K’Andre Miller had a very nervous time of it in his first pro competition other than an intrasquad scrimmage. Alexis Lafreniere was not exposed as much as his fellow rookie and played at an encouraging pace, even getting some shifts with Ryan Strome and Artemi Panarin when Quinn jumbled his line combinations and began moving Kaapo Kakko around.

But do not make the mistake of believing that youth and inexperience were the prime factors in the fiasco in which Semyon Varlamov was tested so rarely that there was no reason to even cite the name of the Islanders’ goaltender until this late in the report.

Panarin and Strome were utterly ineffective, except for a couple of power plays in which the first unit controlled the puck and zipped it around the offensive zone for a good minute or more, though unable to actually create a golden opportunity. Chris Kreider was not much of a factor. Jacob Trouba, caught up at the blue line on that first-period odd-man rush off which Lee scored the 2-0 goal, seemed in between. Adam Fox had a tough night.

So did Tony DeAngelo, who compounded his issues by taking an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on top of a holding infraction. Brendan Lemieux played only one shift in the first period and was benched for large swatches of the second after being responsible for a too-many-men infraction. The Rangers were shorthanded eight times.

Mika Zibanejad might have been the Blueshirts’ best. Pavel Buchnevich worked hard. Filip Chytil had some moments. All right, we’re grasping here to find a sliver of positivity in a forest of frustration and 60-minute failure.

It was only one night, that of course is true. But it is also the only night on which the 2020-21 Rangers can be measured. The Blueshirts waited more than 10 months to get back to the Garden. They shouldn’t have bothered.