Rangers likely will be in dogfight all season for playoff spot with teams bunched up in Eastern Conference

It’s a well-worn cliché that the 82-game NHL season is a marathon, and not a sprint, but that doesn’t mean the Rangers can afford to pace themselves in the winter and save their energy for a finishing kick in the spring. No, even with 50 games to go before Saturday’s matchup against the Montreal Canadiens at the Garden, the Rangers were well aware they are in a dogfight just trying to get into the 16-team playoff field.

And that fight figures to continue all season long.

“Every point is important,’’ defenseman Braden Schneider said Friday. “You win two games and you’re second or third in your division, and then you lose two games and you’re at the bottom.’’

At the start of Saturday, the Rangers were 15-13-4, good for 34 points, which was one point out of a playoff spot. But there were two teams between them and that spot.

The bottom 10 teams, battling for the two wild-card spots in the East, were separated by six points. Which makes every regular season game for all those teams huge.

"That's the reality of today's game,’’ Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said at the Blueshirts’ optional morning skate Saturday. “There’s parity in the league, so there's very few teams that have a significant cushion in the standings where they might have the luxury to rest a player, for example.’’

Sullivan pointed out that with the NHL’s points system, where teams get two points for a win, and one for an overtime or shootout loss, it is difficult to create separation between teams battling for position in the standings. So his message to the team is to just worry about your own games, and not your competition’s.

“You can't really focus on those things that are out of your control – who wins where, things of that nature,’’ he said. “Everybody watches the league and understands. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to stay in the moment. Focus on your group. Focus on what we can do to put ourselves in the best position to have success. We can't think about what's happening three days from now, a week from now, two months from now, or what's going to happen in April. We’ve just got to take care of today… We'll worry about tomorrow when it comes.’’

The thing is, playing with that kind of mindset might prompt a team to always be making decisions for the short term, rather than doing the best thing for the long term.

For instance, a coach may find it a safer option to live with a veteran player whose potential is limited, rather than try a young player who may have more upside. Or perhaps a player with a nagging injury, who might benefit from sitting out a game or two to rest, instead feels pressure to play every game, thus never allowing the injury the time it needs to heal.

Of course, the other teams in the playoff race are in the same boat, and face the same dilemmas. And that’s what makes it all so interesting, and why there’s scoreboard-watching in December.

“Definitely you're checking (the standings) because it's so important,’’ Schneider said. “Yeah, it's early, and… I think the main thing is trying to stay with the process and be present. And focus on the next game. Because if you get too far ahead, you can kind of get spinning in circles. So I think the next game is always the most important one.

“But it's hard not to look,’’ he said. “You’ve got to look. You’ve got to know where you're at, and you’ve got to be honest with what needs to happen. And that's results.’’

Notes & quotes: In continuing the celebration of their Centennial season, the Rangers honored the “New Garden’’ era, from 1967 to 1991, bringing back 22 former players, most from the 1970s, including goaltender John Davidson, pioneering Swedes Ulf Nilsson and Anders Hedberg, Ron Duguay and members of the teams that went to the 1972 and 1979 Stanley Cup Finals. Current MSG colorman Dave Maloney was present, and now-retired MSG play-by-play man Sam Rosen was the MC of the ceremony… The present-day Rangers wore their throwback Centennial jerseys for the sixth time. They were 0-5 while wearing them… Igor Shesterkin (12-10-3, .912 save percentage) started in net for the Rangers... Canadiens rookie goalie Jacob Fowler made his second career start after stopping 36 shots in his debut on Thursday in a win over Pittsburgh... D Urho Vaakanainen, who’d been a healthy scratch for the previous seven games re-entered the lineup, as did winger Taylor Raddysh, who’d missed the previous two. Rookie D Scott Morrow and veteran Jonny Brodzinski were the scratches.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.