FARMERS BRANCH, Texas — “I knew it was coming eventually,” Tanner Glass said, a tired smile across his face.

What the Rangers’ rugged forward knew was the questions about his place in the lineup were inevitable, and all the more pressing after a game like Monday night, when he took two bad penalties en route to a 3-2 loss to the Stars in Dallas that ended the Blueshirts’ eight-game winning streak.

“If you’re having up-and-down games, and your play starts to have waves to it, ebbs and flows, then you’ve put yourself in danger of coming out of the lineup,” Glass said after Tuesday’s practice. “So you try to be consistent, try to make yourself useful to the team every night. But when you have a night like [Monday] night, when I probably hurt the team more than I helped, it’s not a lot of fun.”

It would still be somewhat surprising if Glass weren’t in the lineup for Wednesday’s game against the Panthers in Sunrise, Fla., the Rangers’ annual New Year’s Eve visit there. For one reason or another, coach Alain Vigneault has seemingly set aside roster spots for Glass and veteran Lee Stempniak, even if he’s not willing to concede that’s the case.

“I would say [Glass] brings an element of physicality that we don’t have a lot of,” Vigneault said when asked a direct question about Glass’ role on the team. “Like what I said about Lee, he’s got to earn his regular spot on the team, like anybody else.”

It’s true Glass is one of the few physical players on the Rangers (19-11-4), an element of their game that seems to be lacking. Although Monday’s game got chippy at times, the Blueshirts recorded only 15 total hits, the team-leader being 5-foot-5 Mats Zuccarello.

So both Glass and Vigneault have found ways to quantify the player’s worth, which is another way of bringing eyes away from his stat line of zero goals, one assist, and a team-worst (by far) minus-12 rating through 29 games.

“For me, I measure my game on different things than goals, assists and even plus-minus, but it’s easy to say that when you have a few numbers,” Glass said. “When I look at my season so far, it’s tough to ignore the zero goals, minus-double-digits now. But at the same time, I try not to focus on that stuff, and be positive. And I do know that I impact that game in other ways that other guys don’t.”

So the rotating lineup spot has seemingly come down to J.T. Miller and Jesper Fast, and is a battle for the role of right wing on the fourth line. With Miller, Vigneault has a mercurial talent. In Fast, he has a player who is defensively responsible and offensively absent.

To choose between them, and then Glass and Stempniak — not to mention when and if Anthony Duclair comes back from World Juniors — is the puzzle the coach deals with every night.

“There is a tough balancing act there that you have to do,” Vigneault said. “The most important thing at that time is that game, and those two points that are up for grabs. But also, when you look at the big picture and the 82 games and the decisions you make and where a player is now and where a player might be, that might improve your team.

“So those are the balancing acts that you have to do. The roles that players have on the team, also, and who are you playing against? Do you need a more skilled lineup, do you need a quicker lineup, a grittier lineup? That’s what you try to do. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Glass, 31, came in on a three-year, $4.35 million deal, and he knows his performance is starting to muddy the immediate evaluation of his signing.

“I’ve been in this role for seven years now,” Glass said. “It’s part of the job.”