The Rangers have 13 games to go until the Feb. 24 trade deadline starting with Friday’s Garden kickoff of a home-and-home against dreadful Detroit, and I don’t think management’s approach will be affected even a little by how well or poorly the Blueshirts make out in those contests.

In other words, disregard the narrative about president John Davidson and general manager Jeff Gorton drawing up two sets of contingencies based upon the team’s status as a playoff contender. The standings will be essentially irrelevant as management looks two, three, four and maybe five years down the line, not one, two or three months.

No one in the front office believes the future is this June.

I can promise you this: The Rangers will not keep Chris Kreider through the deadline if he is not signed to a contract extension, even if the team runs off a 13-game winning streak. The same goes for the club’s other pending unrestricted free agent — top-six winger, Jesper Fast. Similarly, the standings won’t determine whether the team keeps pending restricted free agents Tony DeAngelo and Ryan Strome.

A short history review: The 2017-18 Rangers were in ninth place, one point behind the second wild-card Flyers (who, however, held three games in hand) at the All-Star break. That is when ownership and upper management took a sledgehammer to the Everything But Win The Cup Bunch II, the way that Emile Francis did in 1975. Four straight defeats later, the 2017-18 Rangers were in 11th place, but only three points out of a playoff berth and having played only one more game than second wild-card Columbus. So I’m saying there was a chance. That is when The Letter went out to the season subscribers.

These Rangers are in 13th place, better than only the Senators, Devils and Red Wings in the East, are 11 points behind second wild-card Carolina (while holding two games in hand) and would have to leapfrog five teams in order to end the postseason drought at two years. By the way, the Blueshirts have had a winning streak as long as three games once this year, the final three matches before Thanksgiving. No one is short-cutting the program in the hopes of making a wholly unrealistic run at eighth place.

When it comes to trades, specifically regarding Kreider, Fast, DeAngelo, Strome and Alex Georgiev, management will weigh the measure of a potential return package against the value of having the player in the lineup two, three, four and five years from now, and all that, of course, against the cold reality of the hard cap.

Management will not weigh whether trading any or all will impair this year’s team over the final 21 games, and all the better for lottery positioning that you’d never trade just to play a meaningful game or two the first week of March. This might not be easy for a Mika Zibanejad to reconcile, but staying the course makes it more likely that No. 93 will play for a Rangers playoff team before his contract expires after 2021-22.

The continuing absence of talks between management and Kreider’s party — and the same goes for Fast’s people — doesn’t mean the sides can’t come to an agreement. Still, the Rangers have to know the price at which either alternate captain might have signed last summer is unlikely to be the price now, a mere five months from free agency and after assuming all the risks of playing without a contract beyond this year. No one should expect hometown discounts.

Management decisions are as interlocking as the “NY” on Yankees caps. If the Rangers do keep Kreider, say for $7 million per for six or seven years, they’d have to know they could turn that into a zero-sum game by either moving a like amount of money or not keeping DeAngelo. If they commit to keeping DeAngelo, then they’d have to sacrifice at least $5 million somewhere else.

So, buyouts? Buying out Lundqvist would save $3 million (Don’t count on the Rangers buying out Lundqvist). Buying out Staal would save $2.133 million (Might not want to count on that, either). Buying out Smith would save $1.567 million on a presumed AHL assignment (Maybe).

The cap, the contracts, the projections — for instance, is righty defenseman Nils Lundkvist truly close or Lias Andersson-like close? — are the factors management will consider as the deadline draws closer. The standings, not so much.

Not so much, at all.