Regular-season champions can’t settle for just that

ALEXIS Lafreniere scored the first goal of the season at 3:47 of the first period in Buffalo on Oct. 12, he scored the last goal of the season at 13:00 of the third period at the Garden on Monday, and in the six months in between, the Rangers established themselves as the best team in hockey.

That’s all.

This should count for something, right? If you finish with the best record in your sport after going through a grueling marathon, it should count for something meaningful, correct? Maybe the Blueshirts should have skated a victory lap with the Presi- dents’ Trophy after clinching the NHL’s best record with this 4-0 victory over the Senators.

You know what, though?

While the term “regular- season champions” should resonate for this team that exceeded all reasonable expectations by winning a franchiserecord 55 games, that description will become a pejorative if the Rangers fall short of adding another 16 victories in the postseason.

Dave Roberts stole second base at Fenway in 2004 and proved once and for all there is no such thing as a curse. And yes, while it is true that the 2008 Red Wings and the 2013 Blackhawks are the only two teams in the prior 18year history of the hard cap to win the Stanley Cup after having won the Presidents’ Trophy, this is not an NHL-specific dynamic at all.

Only five Super Bowl winners of the last 20 years finished with the NFL’s best record. Since baseball broke into divisions in 1969 and adopted a playoff system that has become more generous every iteration, 15 teams with the best record have won the World Series in 54 years of tournament-style ball.

Six NBA champions over the last 23 years have finished with the league’s best regularseason record. I remember when The Post was ranking the NBA’s all-time teams in the wake of Golden State’s 2015-16 season in which the Dubs set the record for victories by going 73-9. I believe they were ranked in the top two or three by our panel. I asked someone, don’t they have to win?

Which they did not.

Just last year the Bruins established NHL records with 65 victories and 135 points and the season essentially was never spoken of again after a first-round defeat to the Panthers even while holding the allegedly critical Game 7 home-ice advantage.

We know that the Rangers’ 2023-24 is ultimately going to be evaluated by how far they go in the playoffs. That’s a function of 1940, that’s a function of 30 years again, that’s a function of last year. It’s also a function of present-day reality. We have devolved fully into a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately social construct. In the age of instant gratification, last week was too long ago.

More’s the pity. For this has been a season for the Rangers that merits celebration. It’s a club whose work ethic did the organization proud under incoming head coach Peter Laviolette, who instilled a detail-oriented, structured approach to the job that his team embraced from Day 1.

The Rangers went into that 1-3-1 neutral zone trap in Buffalo on Oct. 12 and never really stopped surprising. They bolted out of the gate 18-4-1. After listing for the better part of two months during the guts of the winter, they charged down the backstretch, going 26-7-1 in their final 34 contests. They took first place in the Metro on Oct. 24 and held the lead for the next 175 days.

They won on talent, they won on structure, they won on goaltending — Jonathan Quick may have been the most canny free agent signing of the NHL summer — and on their power play and penalty kill, third in the NHL in both specialties. Indeed, the Blueshirts concluded the season by killing 21 of 22 man advantages they faced over the last eight games. They scored a pair of shorthanded goals while generating five odd-man rushes and two breakaways while shorthanded against the Islanders on Saturday and the Senators in this one.

Artemi Panarin finished with 49 goals and 120 points while hearing chants of “MVP! MVP!” throughout the night on which he scored once and added a helper. His final point came on an assist to Lafreniere, the perfect mirror image to the season-opening goal.

Through the season, the Panarin-Vincent Trocheck-Lafreniere line combined for 54 goals to lead all NHL forward units. The thing is, of course, is that Panarin and Lafreniere were centered the first 10 games of the season by Filip Chytil, who … well, shockingly materialized last week and may be an option for the playoffs.

Ah, those. The Rangers were the best team to not win in the Emile Francis years. They were the best team to not win last decade after their 2014-15 Presidents’ Trophy season ended with a Game 7 defeat in the conference final. That’s old for this franchise.

The Rangers just completed one of the great regular seasons in franchise history. Their .695 points percentage ranks third behind the beloved 1970-71 and 1971-72 squads that finished at .699. They finished 12-7-1 against the rest of the top 10.

They are the NHL’s regular-season champions. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

For now.