The Rangers stepped into the Garden and put on a mostly clueless display and fell to the Canadiens, 3-1. And rather than being back in business in the playoff hunt, the Rangers instead dropped three points back of Boston for the final playoff spot.

The Rangers stepped into the Garden and put on a mostly clueless display and fell to the Canadiens, 3-1. And rather than being back in business in the playoff hunt, the Rangers instead dropped three points back of Boston for the final playoff spot.

A Rangers-Flyers game with bad blood and enduring grudges is nothing new, and never gets old. But given the peril in which the Rangers find their playoff hopes, how much can they afford to settle the kinds of scores that don’t lead to points?

Vinny Prospal scored a pair of goals and Marian Gaborik added one in the Rangers’ three-goal first period from which they never looked back in a 5-2 victory over the Atlanta Thrashers. Gaborik and Chris Drury each had two assists.

Go figure: For as lousy as the Rangers have been 4-on-4 this season one of their better traits has been their play at 4-on-5. But even that penalty-killing corps has been wobbly at the knees at the wrong time of year.

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.