THE NHL’s general managers finally joined the crowd that had had enough of scenes such as Sunday’s, when a severely concussed Marc Savard was carted off Pittsburgh ice on a stretcher. Yesterday, after years of lip service, they took action.

The Rangers dropped another one Wednesday night, their fourth straight defeat, this one a 6-3 decision to their cross-river rivals in a game in which the Rangers kept coming back until they fell off the see-saw.

There are now 16 games left in the regular season and the Rangers are still on the outside of the playoff picture, which means they have no time for the baby steps they’ve taken over the past week.

The Rangers lost a low-scoring affair, 2-0, to the Washington Capitals last night and watched their playoff push in the season’s final month become all the more desperate. Jose Theodore made 30 saves for his first shutout of the season.

The Rangers will have their leading scorer back when they face the NHL’s highest-scoring team Saturday. Marian Gaborik will return against the Capitals in Washington after missing the last three games due first to a laceration in his thigh.

The Rangers will bring no new additions to the roster into Thursday night’s Garden match with the Pittsburgh Penguins, so what you see is what you will get for the 19-game stretch drive toward the playoffs - and that’s for better or worse.

The Rangers Saturday added a veteran goaltender for the stretch drive toward the playoffs, plucking Alex Auld off reentry waivers from the Dallas Stars.

Michael Del Zotto was the lone Ranger looking on from the other side of the boards as the team gathered for practice, still healing from the 50 stitches he received after being cut around his left rib cage on Feb. 12 in Pittsburgh.

Showing that the Rangers’ wit is about as razor-sharp as their 10th-place hockey team, that fan marriage proposal gone horribly wrong on Sunday at the Garden turned out Monday to be a wisecrack gone dismally right.

The Rangers’ shop is closed for the next two weeks, their season sent into happy hiatus on the strength of five unanswered goals in Sunday’s 5-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning that came without the stitched-up Marian Gaborik and Michael Del Zotto.