Regarding the Rangers:

The game in which a team is eliminated often is subject to less inspection than any other match of a season because the immediate inclination is to (a) place the just-completed year into some kind of perspective, and (b) look forward.

But in the light of day, Friday night’s 2-0 Game 7 defeat by the Lightning at the Garden keeps looking worse and worse. The Rangers were dead before the benumbed crowd was. They didn’t lose because of the fans.

First period, scoreless, and the Blueshirts not only went more than 9:30 without a shot from 10:03 to 19:37, but they had all of one attempt — a Ryan McDonagh try from 54 feet that missed the net, according to the official NHL sheet — while Tampa Bay amassed six shots on 11 tries.

Second period, still scoreless, and the Rangers were able to produce a total of two shots on a pair of power plays 4:05 apart — both from second-unit point-man McDonagh — on seven attempts.

Before deciding on a course moving forward, management and the coaching staff had better get to the crux of what was the matter on Friday, when the team laid a goose egg one win away from the Stanley Cup finals.

Rick Nash made an impact in two of the seven games in the conference final, which isn’t even close to good enough from the team’s best regular-season player.

Again. What does a team do when its leading goal-scorer three years running can’t be counted on to score goals at the most critical time of the year? Nash had the two best playoff games of his life in Games 4 and 6 of the conference finals, but came up empty in Game 7 — one shot, three attempts blocked — when a big game would have gone a long, long way to changing the narrative on his career.

A scapegoat, no, because others including Big Game Derick Brassard were also nowhere to be found on Friday, but where do the Rangers go from here with Nash, who has a limited no-trade clause and carries a $7.8 million cap hit through 2017-18?

If general manager Glen Sather — there is no indication he is thinking of stepping down or up, though that doesn’t mean it would be out of the question — and the staff believe that no more is required than some tweaking on the margins, then the Rangers go into next season with Nash as their first-line left wing with Brassard and Mats Zuccarello, presuming the Norwegian is cleared to play.

But if there is a belief that something more is required, then the Rangers would be wise to look at St. Louis, where coach Ken Hitchcock is an unabashed fan of No. 61, and the Blues are in desperate need of changing their own postseason narrative.

In order to make any sense at all for the Rangers, for whom Nash has scored 15.1 percent of the team’s regular-season goals since putting on the Blueshirt and whose 42 this year were twice as many as co-runners-up Chris Kreider and Marty St. Louis produced, the conversation on a return package would have to feature T.J. Oshie, Jaden Schwartz and Alexander Steen.

As for St. Louis (the player), a proud man who has had a great and inspirational career and was an integral part of a Cup finalist and a Presidents’ Trophy winner in his 14 months as a Ranger, sentiment and history cannot be permitted to obscure the reality of the playoffs, in which No. 26 was overmatched most of the tournament.

If St. Louis wasn’t Marcel Dionne or Guy Lafleur in New York, neither was he Martin St. Louis, and he must know it. It is time for the Rangers to go in a different direction.

Everyone is locked in on defense, so if the Blueshirts are looking for a change, they will seek to move either Kevin Klein — who never looked the same after returning from the broken arm that sidelined him for the final month of the season and the first round — or Dan Boyle, who’d have to waive a no-move clause. In return, the Rangers would have to obtain a righty or be willing to look at Dylan McIlrath, who is probably more likely to be included in a trade than given a shot in New York.

It is unlikely that Edmonton or Buffalo, two teams with a pair of first-round picks in the upcoming draft that are seeking a goaltender, would be willing to yield one for Cam Talbot. Unless the Blueshirts can get that sort of a premium in return for their backup, they are far better served by keeping him rather than dealing him, even if he is heading into the final year of his contract.

The cap will present challenges for the Rangers, but the greater challenge is identifying the missing ingredient that was evident through its absence in the Game 7 fiasco that prevented the team from advancing to the Promised Land.

This just in: Tampa Bay’s Steve Yzerman has cast his vote for Sather as GM of the Year.