The Rangers and Penguins are the only two teams in the East to have qualified for the playoffs in seven of the eight seasons of the hard cap era.

The Rangers and Kings are the only two teams in the league to have advanced to at least the second round of the playoffs in each of the past two years.

But the Rangers appear as far away from a Stanley Cup as at any time since the league reopened for business in 2005-06, so whatever comparative success they’ve enjoyed feels like a massive failure.

It has been one step forward, two steps back; two steps forward, three steps back.

It is not good enough.

If there is a vision propelling this franchise, it is unclear exactly what it might be.

That is the indictment that can be levied against general manager Glen Sather, whose team includes 11 players in no more than their second seasons in New York, and only two of whom (Rick Nash and Chris Kreider) seem assured of being here for a third.

If Bill Torrey didn’t have a job for life, how can Sather?

How can anyone, other than a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas wants to know.

Yes, the Rangers can make the playoffs in their God-awful division, and yes, the Rangers conceivably could record their annual early-round victory over the Capitals, but does anyone believe the ceiling is higher than a second-round goodbye?

Tell me there’s more to the plan than that.

Two immediate items of utmost importance: the futures of pending free agents Ryan Callahan and Dan Girardi.

Within the next three months, Sather must determine whether the Rangers are going to be able and willing to sign their captain and their first-pair right defensemen to contract extensions.

Neither has played up to expectations and both will command lucrative deals in a market where demand will exceed supply and dollars will be plentiful within a rising cap.

If the Rangers aren’t able to sign them to extensions before the March 5 deadline, the team must be willing to trade both as rental properties in exchange for draft picks and prospects, in order to reload for a run at a Cup rather than keeping them for the playoffs then allowing them to leave scot-free.

Was it truly such a good idea for Alain Vigneault not to have watched any video of last season’s games during the 12 weeks between the time he was hired and the start of training camp?

Because if the personnel on hand is not compatible with his vision, shouldn’t he maybe have known that before the start?

The Rangers have gone from having a maniacal control freak and his equally maniacal assistant (in professional temperament, that is) in their ears and faces to a seemingly detached coach who leaves much of the work to the players themselves.

I asked one player this week whether he had been shown video relating to a specific play on the ice. The response, not offered as a criticism but in a matter-of-fact manner, was, “He says what he says and then expects you to figure it out.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a coach unfavorably compare his team’s work ethic to another club’s the way Vigneault did last week in his evaluation of the Rangers and the Red Wings.

I watch Tortorella from afar and see a man who sure seems to have learned from the mistakes that cost him his job in New York, and if that is indeed true, more power to him (and Vancouver GM Mike Gillis).

See, you don’t just get to fire a coach, replace him with his polar opposite in demeanor, and not expect that the consequence of the dramatic shift in dynamics will be examined.

Success is the only way that the comparisons cease.

A fundamental problem as exposed through the first 10 weeks of the season is that the Rangers have no identity because Tortorella — for better or worse — was their identity.

No player, or group of players, has been able to fill in the blanks, which extend to the expressions on their faces in the postgame locker room.

A half-dozen people in the industry — including a goalie — last week told me not to discount the degree of difficulty Henrik Lundqvist faces in adapting from a style in which every Ranger’s primary assignment was to protect the net to the more freelance style his team now plays in the defensive zone.

Peter Laviolette was at the Garden on Thursday for Blue Jackets-Rangers, scouting for Team USA. Brandon Dubinsky, whom the once-and-perhaps future Islanders’ coach was specifically scoping out, didn’t have much of a game, but Derek Stepan, also a candidate for the Olympic team, was worse.

The Rangers have won one of their past nine games (1-7-1) at the Garden. Just to give you an idea of how that fits the definition of scraping the bottom of the barrel, the last time that happened, Jozef Balej was in the lineup when the 2003-04 post-deadline purge Blueshirts were 1-8 in the final nine at home.

The Rangers are last in the NHL in five-on-five PDO, the metric that measures shooting percentage and save percentage. There is some evidence that over time, PDO tends to regress toward the mean of 100.

As a predictor, then, the Rangers, whose PDO is 97.3 as per extraskater.com (5.8 shooting, 91.5 save) after having been 10th last year at 100.9 (7.4, 93.5), should improve over the course of the season — unless they just have a lousy season.

Math. Yo.