A big return for player who never scored the big one

IT WAS the 9:15 mark of the second overtime of Game 5 in L.A., the Rangers were facing extinction, and here was Derek Stepan laying a gorgeous cross-ice pass onto the stick of Rick Nash for the right-wing one-timer into the yawning near side of the net that would send the 2014 Cup final back to the Garden.

But in a flash, Slava Voynov frantically got his stick down in the shot’s path and Nash’s drive that was ticketed for the top of the net instead ticked off the shaft of the now disgraced defenseman’s stick and fluttered harmlessly away into the far corner.

I ns te a d of goi ng home for Game 6, the Rangers were going home for the summer when Alec Martinez slammed home a rebound just over five minutes later.

And that, despite six pretty darn good seasons wearing Blueshirt No. 61, is the snapshot that captures the essence of Nash on Broadway: close, but not the closer management envisioned him to be in trading Brandon Dubinsky, Artem Anisimov, a first-rounder and Tim Erixon to the Blue Jackets in late July 2012 for the 2002 first-overall selection.

There never quite was a Nash Era in New York, even if at the time of the trade he was the fourth senior Ranger behind Henrik Lundqvist, Marc Staal and Ryan McDonagh in terms of continuous service. A chapter is more like it.

That chapter ended Sunday morning, when the rebuilding Blueshirts dealt Nash to the Bruins for a 2018 first-rounder that projects between 25th and 31st overall; 20-year-old Golden Gophers sophomore defenseman Ryan Lindgren, the 49thoverall selection in 2016 who played for Team USA in each of the last two World Juniors; skill-oriented swing forward Ryan Spooner, a good skater with good hands who has appeared more comfortable in the middle but is certainly not out of the place on the win, where he skated with Kevin Hayes and Jesper Fast in his Blueshirts debut; and Matt Beleskey, the winger who was once good in Anaheim years ago, broke Derek Stepan’s ribs with a late hit a couple of years ago in Boston on Black Friday and has been a cap-bury in the AHL since December.

The ultimate success of this deal hinges on A) the development of Lindgren, who is renowned for his character and leadership skills and is known as especially solid in his own end but apparently does not have the flashand-dash capabilities so necessary to be a premium defenseman in this NHL; and B) into what director of player personnel Gord Clark and his crew turn that first-rounder.

Thus, it will take a while to assess whether general manager Jeff Gorton crushed a home run or hit a double here, but it is incontrovertible that the Rangers did well obtaining a well-regard- ed prospect, a first-rounder, a serviceable 26-year-old forward (plus Beleskey) for an impending free agent who, if the stars align, could return this summer.

Since his arrival, Nash ranks first in goals, third in assists and in games played and fourth in points on the Rangers. The first 65 games of 2014-15, in which he scored 39 goals in establishing himself as a Hart candidate for the team that won the Presidents’ Trophy, represented the most dominant season of any Rangers position player since Jaromir Jagr’s 2005-06.

But in Game 67 of that year in Buffalo, Nash was roughed up and upside the head by Zach Bogosian, and his season was never the same after that. And that marked the inescapable reality that Nash’s career turned following concussions he sustained in each of his first two seasons as a Ranger. The first came in his 12th game with the team, early in the 2012-13 lockout-delayed season, when Milan Lucic slammed his head into the glass. The second came in the fourth game of the following year when he took a headshot from Brad Stuart that sidelined him for 17 games. There were flashes and stretches when Nash would be a force driving to the net, but other stretches in which he confined himself to the perimeter.

And the playoffs became a litany of near-misses, even if not necessarily as dramatic as the one in L.A., but the player who was brought here as — repeat after me — the missing link recorded just 14 goals and 24 assists in 73 tournament games. Not good enough, and he knew it.

Nash is as diligent as they come, as nice a guy and as pure a pro to have come down the pike in years. Now, he heads up the Mass Pike to a team on which he doesn’t have to be a primary goal-scorer or go-to guy. He can simply blend in. That suits him.

And this deal suits the Rangers, who got a fair number of pieces for one of the many players over the decades who was supposed to be the missing piece himself, but wasn’t.