The Rangers are operating in past present tense, even if they are just three points out of a wild-card berth according to the standings that surely are an optical illusion.

For in losing six of their last seven and going 3-9 in their last 12 for the Blueshirts’ least productive dozen-game stretch of hockey since the 2003-04 post-purge club wheezed to the finish line at 2-10, the era of Plenty Good But Not Good Enough has run into a brick wall.

With an expected selloff coming by the Feb. 26 trade deadline, this present Rangers roster is a thing of the past.

Honestly, this is not such a surprise. The Rangers, at best, were projected to be a bubble team. That’s what they were until the bubble burst almost immediately following the Winter Classic victory, when the bill came suddenly due on all the organizational maneuvers directed at putting the Rangers over the top the last six years.

How did we get to this point where, within just more than a month, the Rangers went from a team that might have been able to mount up for a dark horse challenge to one that’s waiting to be put out of its misery? Again, it is the result of an accumulation of past sins and misjudgments plus some bad luck and unforeseen individual player deterioration.

Weakness at center

Management made two miscalculations here that left the Blueshirts all but naked down the middle in the wake of Derek Stepan’s trade to Arizona.

First, management was wrong in its projection that No. 7 pick Lias Andersson would not only be able to make the jump directly from the draft to the NHL as a 19-year-old, but would be able to assume third-line responsibilities. The Swede was not ready.

Now one has to hope that the Blueshirts didn’t draft him based on immediate need rather than selecting a player with a higher home-run upside such as world junior championship MVP Casey Mittlestadt, who went next to Buffalo, because he was perceived as further away from making it to the NHL.

Second, management erred in having J.T. Miller as the fall-back option in case Andersson couldn’t make it. Miller’s shift to the middle for nearly half of the season impeded the 24-year-old’s progress while proving that he’s most valuable and effective on the wing.

General manager Jeff Gorton did cast about for a veteran center over the summer, but none was available at an appropriate price. Again, though, the Rangers believed that Andersson (or Andersson/Miller) would give the team as much as the veterans who might have proved affordable alternatives. No, Tyler Bozak never became available.

That aside, there are grave questions whether Mika Zibanejad, slow to get back on track following injury for a second consecutive year, has the stuff to be a legitimate No. 1. Zibanejad, who has morphed into a shooter, has a total of six primary assists in 1,277 five-on-five minutes as a Ranger. No. 93 was advertised as more of a three-zone center than Derick Brassard, for whom he was acquired two summers ago. At least so far, that has not been remotely the case.

Weakness on the blue line

It is impossible to evaluate Kevin Shattenkirk’s signing and season now that we know that he was essentially playing on one leg after sustaining a left meniscus injury the second week of training camp, but Shattenkirk’s ongoing issues turned a projected strength into a dramatic weakness.

Shattenkirk’s best hockey of the season, from November through mid-December, coincided with his team’s best run through which the Blueshirts went 16-5-1 from Oct. 31 through Dec. 19. So perhaps a healthy No. 22 would have provided enough cover to allow the Blueshirts to have remained a respectable entity.

Brendan Smith, who signed a four-year contract worth $17.4 million he earned with stout work in the playoffs last year, was supposed to become part of the new leadership core. Instead, he has played so badly, the Rangers might even consider placing him on waivers to get out from under (not that he would be claimed) the deal.

When coach Alain Vigneault made the early call that Shattenkirk was incompatible with Ryan McDonagh, the Rangers were back to the same-old, same-old without a partner to complement the captain on the first pair. That — plus Smith’s substandard play out of the gate off a bad camp — meant that the Brady Skjei-Smith second tandem blew up. Plus, not one of the promising young candidates into camp — Tony DeAngelo, Neal Pionk, Alexei Bereglazov — earned a spot.

No depth

Memory can play tricks on you, for it seemed as if the Rangers had been unusually healthy the last four years. Not necessarily so. But when players went out, the Blueshirts were strong enough to cover for them. Not this time.

All of the win-now trades that left the system barren came home to roost when Shattenkirk and Chris Kreider went down for the long haul before being joined on the sideline by Pavel Buchnevich, Marc Staal and Jimmy Vesey. The Rangers had no plausible replacements and as such are now sending a skeleton team onto the ice to be blasted into oblivion.