The Rangers rolled the dice and put all of their trade chips on the ice Thursday night.
Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes may have gotten their Garden farewell, in a 4-1 loss to the Wild, but a third Ranger likely to be wearing a different sweater by Monday’s deadline didn’t make it through the game.
Adam McQuaid went to the locker room late in the first period, with what coach David Quinn later called an upper-body injury, and did not return to the bench to start the second period. The team soon announced the veteran defenseman was done for the night for “precautionary” reasons after playing 5:22.
Quinn said McQuaid is “actually fine,” and probably could have returned, but they decided to play it safe.
Still, it was a reminder of what the Rangers (26-26-8) were risking by putting their top trade pieces in the lineup, with Flames general manager Brad Treliving and Penguins assistant general manager Bill Guerin among the watchful eyes of scouts in the building. Quinn had said before the game he planned on playing them “until told differently,” and a decision from management never came down to change course in order to protect the trio from injury.
Zuccarello and Hayes both said the idea of being held out was not discussed with them.
“I am not the GM or the coach of this team, so you gotta ask them,” Zuccarello said. “I try and do my best as long as I’m here and as long as they call my name in the lineup.”
As for whether they ever let it sink in that it could have been their final game at the Garden, neither player was ready to wax poetic.
“No,” Hayes said. “There’s nothing I can do there.”
“I mean, you never know,” Zuccarello added. “I have fun every time I play hockey. I have fun every time I’m in this rink. Whatever happens, happens. There’s nothing I can control. You gotta ask some other people if this was my last game.”
If this was it for the duo, it wasn’t the most memorable of nights. Pavel Buchnevich tied the game 1-1 on a second-period power-play strike, but the Wild scored three unanswered goals, including a killer to make it 3-1 with 8:57 left in the third after Brady Skjei was clearly tripped and no call was made.
The Rangers have two more games before the deadline — Saturday against the Devils and Sunday in Washington — though if Zuccarello and Hayes are not traded by then, they may be in Bubblewrap after seeing McQuaid leave early Thursday.
All three players on the trading block could have been healthy scratches, after the Rangers made a midday call-up of Lias Andersson from AHL Hartford. The move gave them 13 healthy forwards and eight healthy defensemen, enough depth to scratch Zuccarello, Hayes and McQuaid and use a lineup of 11 forwards and seven defensemen if need be. Instead, Andersson just replaced a healthy Boo Nieves as the fourth-line center.
The precautionary scratches would not have been out of the norm for this time of the year. Elsewhere Thursday night, the Senators chose to do so with Mark Stone, Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel while the Devils did the same with Marcus Johansson and Ben Lovejoy.
Zuccarello and Hayes are both pending free agents, and with extension talks going nowhere, per The Post’s Larry Brooks, they are likely in their final days as Rangers.
“Of course it affects people — they’re people, all of us,” goalie Henrik Lundqvist said of the looming deadline. “But all we can do is just go to work [Friday] and work here this weekend and a couple games coming up. That’s all we can do. We don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s no point in going there too much.”