We are three games into the seven-year, $56 million contract the Rangers awarded Jacob Trouba after obtaining the defenseman from Winnipeg, so let’s keep this in perspective.

It does, however, provide a snapshot commentary on the state of the team’s blue line that David Quinn did not use Trouba, partnered with Libor Hajek, on the matchup pair against the dynamic Connor McDavid-Leon Draisaitl-Zach Kassian unit in Saturday afternoon’s 4-1 defeat to the Oilers. The coach instead opted to go with the Marc Staal-Tony DeAngelo tandem in concert with the Mika Zibanejad-Artemi Panarin-Pavel Buchnevich troika.

The McDavid line had far the better of it, but then, too, so did the rest of the Oilers in this match in which the Rangers were off-kilter, chasing and reacting rather than initiating through most of the contest.

“We were trying to [get a handle] on our pairings and wrestled with all three of them,” Quinn said. “I thought Staalsy has been playing real well, I thought Tony’s puck movement could get us out, but at the end of the day on one line or one group.

“We weren’t good all the way up and through the lineup.”

There certainly was rust to knock off the barnacles of the Good Ship Ranger after having been off since last Saturday. The Oilers, on the other hand, had played and won a shootout in New Jersey on Friday. This was an ultimate fresh versus tired matchup except one team wasn’t tired and the other was too fresh.

Regardless, the rest/rust was not an excuse Zibanejad had any interest in deploying after the contest in which his line was outplayed by a wide margin, the attempts in the five-on-five match going 15-6 for the Oilers.

“If we had won,” said No. 93, “then it would have been the best week of our lives.”

It was the best day of Kaapo Kakko’s NHL life, the 18-year-old Finn scoring a nifty goal in tight off a nifty backhand feed from Ryan Strome for the first of his big-league career to give the Rangers a 1-0 lead at 18:28 of the first period the team carried into the intermission.

But even in the first, the Blueshirts were out-attempted at full strength by 21-6. Their best chance to knock the Oilers, 5-0-0 after this one, may have come and gone earlier in the match when the Rangers were unable to capitalize on 3:39 of continuous power play that featured 40 seconds with a two-man advantage.

“It was not as good as we would have liked,” Panarin said through an interpreter. “We had a different combination. We’ll go back and work on it.”

The Rangers ceded space and allowed time to an Oilers team that looked considerably faster, while rarely creating zone time off the forecheck. When the Rangers did create chances, they refused to fire until they could see the whites of goaltender Mike Smith’s eyes through the small openings in his mask.

“It goes back to what I talked about last year,” said Quinn, whose team recorded 21 shots. “I can think of five instances off the top of my head where we had incredible chances to shoot the puck and we don’t. And off of that might come four other shots.

“So if you get a loose puck sitting in front of the net, you’d better get rid of it in a hurry. We just didn’t have that shooting mentality. We didn’t do a lot of things in a hurry.”

The Oilers tied the score at 6:45 of the second when Oscar Klefbom sent a long one through a tangle of bodies that beat Henrik Lundqvist from the left side. It remained tied until McDavid put one off Trouba’s leg from a bad angle on a power play at 9:44 of the third. Draisaitl sneaked on through Lundqvist’s pads at 13:12 — not a good one — before sealing it with an empty-netter.

“I thought we had good energy and a good first period,” Lundqvist said. “I don’t know, maybe that time away from the game made it a little tougher to find the next level.”

Chris Kreider went to the room with 4:29 remaining in the first period after Jujhar Khaira had fallen on his leg. No. 20 returned for the start of the second and took his regular shift, but was ineffective in 16:40. Indeed, it was Kakko rather than Kreider who joined the first line when Quinn pulled Lundqvist for the extra attacker.

Still, the signal matchup of the afternoon was the marquee one between McDavid’s unit and Zibanejad’s. It went the wrong way.

“They did a better job. They were putting pucks behind us and won the matchup,” Zibanejad said. “We weren’t good enough.”