I feel like Andy Dufresne using the meaning of hope to tell Red of his plans to escape Shawshank Prison. Except I’m not trying to escape Shawshank Prison, I’m trying to escape the 2009-10 Rangers.

On Thursday night with under a minute left, Mike Sullivan drew up a play for the Rangers’ offensive-zone faceoff. The play ended with Erik Christensen giving a no-look pass to Chris Drury, who banged it home with 16.5 seconds left. John Tortorella celebrated like he just won a Showcase Showdown, and the Rangers went on to earn two points that they had to have.

The Rangers have made it hard to give up on them, and at the same time, they have made it equally hard to believe in them. They have let their playoff chances dwindle down to basically needing to run the table over the final weeks of the season. But whenever it comes time to pull the plug on them, they go out and win and prevent their magic number from completing its inevitable freefall.

The Rangers’ playoff push would have ended long ago if the Flyers or Bruins wanted it to. Instead, the Rangers’ main competition has slipped up as much as the Blueshirts themselves, and the Ranges are still breathing with eight games left. Barely breathing, but breathing nonetheless.

But like Red told Andy, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

It was just three months ago that the New York Giants gave hope to their fans before pulling the rug out from underneath them. It was the Giants who made sure their playoff hopes lasted until the final weeks of the season before the Eagles and Panthers pounded them into submission. Now it’s the Rangers going down that same path. And the thought of coming close again just to fall at the last second is scarier than the look Frank Martin used to stare down his Kansas State players during overtime on Thursday night.

Was I surprised when the Rangers tied the game? No, because I have learned to expect the unexpected with this team. No lead is safe and no deficit is insurmountable. The Rangers have become as predictable as the weather forecast 23 days from now, and the only person crazier than someone who expects consistency out of this team is a person who bets on this team.

Every goal against the Rangers this season has seemed like three and every goal for has seemed like the only one they will score in the game. It’s not exactly the healthiest way to watch a team, but I continue to do so, thinking that just maybe they can win out or come close to winning out, and sneak into the playoffs. And the best-case scenario if this hope turns into reality? A meeting with Ovechkin and the Capitals in the first round of the playoffs. Not exactly the type of dream someone should be hoping for.

But here we are, eight games and 16 days away from the end of the season, and the Rangers have instilled the same hope the Giants instilled at the end of December. Mathematically, there is a chance the Rangers can make the postseason, but even if they take care of their own business, they will still need help from other sources, and in the end, winning their own games might not be enough.

It would have been easier if the Rangers finished the season like the 2008 Yankees. In 2008, the Yankees folded pre-flop, saving themselves and their fans from emotional heartache and disaster. I’d rather the Rangers went away like the 2008 Yankees rather than the 2008 Mets, who lasted all the way until the river before coming up short. But it’s the Rangers we’re talking about, and being led on and strung along is in their DNA. In all likelihood, the season will come down to the final weekend against the Flyers.

None of this would be possible without the play of Henrik Lundqvist, who has to be tired of being a Ranger, or at least tired of being a Ranger with this group of Rangers. Even with the Rangers defense letting the Devils play “rebound” against Lundqvist in the third period, King Henrik stopped breakaway after breakaway and a handful of odd-man rushes to keep the game from turning into a blowout.

Lundqvist might be the best-kept secret in the NHL. That might sound ridiculous considering he plays in New York on the biggest stage in the sports world, but he certainly isn’t recognized with the credit he deserves. Those who have the luxury of watching Lundqvist on a nightly basis understand just how good he is and how valuable he is to the Rangers. Casual hockey fans, on the other hand, might not know because no one on the Rangers is going to be winning the Vezina or Hart Trophy anytime soon. Those awards are saved for players on winning teams.

Without Lundqvist, the Rangers are a last-place team playing for the No. 1 pick in the 2010 draft rather than playing for a playoff berth. Put Lundqvist on the Red Wings last year and they win the Cup, not the Penguins. Put him on the Capitals this season and maybe Washington has five losses. With Henrik, the Rangers are on the postseason bubble – a place that has become their second home after MSG. Without him, MSG is home to two miserable franchises, not just one.

The reason to still believe in the Rangers is simple: playoff hockey. Postseason play has a way of making optimists out of pessimists. It’s enough to make someone believe that a 33-32-9 team can run the table over the final weeks of the season. It’s enough to not only make the idea of making the playoffs seem reasonable, but also the idea that the Rangers could get hot, ride a hot goalie in Lundqvist into the first round, and possibly even make it out of the first round. Thinking that the Rangers are capable of making the playoffs is insane enough. Thinking they might be able to do something if they get in is really just stupid. But hope will make people do stupid things, like think the Rangers can survive the Capitals in a seven-game series.

“Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

As long as the Rangers stay alive, there is hope that their season will last longer than 82 games.

On Tuesday, there were several possibilities for how the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings would look at the end of the night. The Rangers were in a position to take over possession of the eighth and final spot in the East (a k a the chance to lose to the Capitals in the first round), and also in a position to lose more ground on the Flyers, Canadiens and Bruins.

With Rangers-Canadiens, Bruins-Hurricanes, Flyers-Predators all on the same night, I envisioned the opportunity to start this story off by saying, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?” Just six days after I questioned John Tortorella’s future with the team and compared his Rangers tenure with the men before him, he had a chance to erase the 1,598 words I used to question his job along with Glen Sather’s.

If the Rangers could take care of their own business and get some help from the Hurricanes and Predators, maybe Tortorella could have this team on a run to the playoffs that very few thought was possible. But all that talk of urgency the team spent preaching about during the week ended up just being talk.

On a night when the Rangers could have moved into eighth place and prevented the Canadiens from separating themselves from the pack even more, the Rangers put together one of their worst home performances of the season. But the four-point swing in the standings between the Rangers and Canadiens wasn’t the only bad news for the Blueshirts. It was just the tip of the iceberg.

After the Rangers were able to tie the game at 1, I flipped to the Bruins-Hurricanes game where Carolina had cut into the Boston’s lead and trailed just 2-1. Then I flipped to the Flyers-Predators where Nashville had a commanding 3-1 lead and a goal away from putting that game on ice. Things were quietly falling into place for the Rangers if they could score the next goal. But when the Canadiens took the lead against the Rangers on a garbage deflection of Artem Anisimov’s skate, everything began to fall apart at the same time across the league.

The Rangers lost, the Canadiens won, the Bruins won, the Flyers fought back to earn a point in a shootout loss and Game 70 of the Rangers’ season was used up. Maybe it wasn’t all bad. I guess the Flyers could have gotten two points instead of just one.

Here is what the standings looked like at 7 p.m. on Tuesday night:

6. Flyers, 76 pts
7. Canadiens, 76 pts
8. Bruins, 72 pts
9. Rangers, 71 pts

And here is what the bottom of the East looks like now:

6. Canadiens, 78 pts
7. Flyers, 77 pts
8. Bruins, 74 pts
9. Rangers, 71 pts

The Canadiens tried to give the Rangers the game on Tuesday and so did the refs with timely power-play opportunities handed to the Blueshirts, including man advantages at 11:20 and 19:05 of the third period. But the Rangers wanted no part of their power play, as they went 0-for-5 with the man advantage and recorded a total of two shots on the five chances.

The Rangers had to put a dent into their direct competition, but instead, they ran in place while their competition took off for the finish line. And while saying the right things might sound nice, it really doesn’t matter at this point. All that matters is getting two points at the end of the day, and for a team that talked about playing with a postseason mentality and a do-or-die mindset all week, they couldn’t have played with less desire against a team they are chasing.

“Every game is a Game Seven for us, no matter who we are playing,” Henrik Lundqvist said before Tuesday’s game. And Lundqvist is right. It’s just too bad he is the only one that plays like it. You could make a case for Sean Avery too after his last two games, but it took him nearly the entire season and a recent benching to wake up, and there aren’t enough games left for Tortorella to wake up the rest of the team by making examples of every player.

Lundqvist continues to stand on his head while his anemic offense tries to muster some shots and even sometimes a goal or two. He continues to play outstanding down the stretch, and is always there to field questions after the game whether the team wins or loses. He has yet to pull a Billy Wagner and throw his teammates under the bus for inconsistent play, but King Henrik is only human and at some point, you’d have to think that the last few years of carrying the team on his back will get to him.

No one expected the Rangers to run the table and climb to the top of the Eastern Conference standings, and it’s unfair to think that they will win every game over the final weeks of the season. But you’d like to think they would at least come to play at home against a team they are chasing. Then again, maybe it’s just wishful thinking asking for a team that is under .500 at home to start playing with a purpose in their own building with just four games remaining at MSG.

Is the Rangers’ season over? No. And wins over St. Louis on Thursday and Boston on Sunday will certainly enhance their playoff odds. But what have the Rangers done to make anyone believe in them down the stretch? With two wins in their last seven games and Sean Avery as their offense, the Rangers aren’t exactly deserving of a playoff berth, and maybe that’s for the better. Maybe finishing ninth instead of eighth will keep the Rangers from being dismantled by the Capitals in the first round and save the tri-state area further embarrassment from the Blueshirts.

Chris Drury referred to the Rangers’ losing ways as “immaturity” after being embarrassed by the Canadiens. “That’s what it’s been all year,” Drury said. “Simple answer.”

Hopefully the Rangers will respond to “immaturity” because they didn’t seem to understand “urgency” or “Game Seven” or “postseason mentality” or “do-or-die,” and there isn’t enough time left to try any other motivational phrases.

Type “fire john tortorella” into Google and you will get nothing. Well nothing relevant. Sure, there are “about 17,800” articles that match those keywords, but none of those 17,800 search results suggest that he should no longer be coaching the Rangers. The majority of the results involve the keywords, just not in that order, and instead commend Tortorella’s job as coach and beg for Glen Sather to be fired. That is actually the solution that makes the most sense to improve the Rangers, but at this point it’s unrealistic.

Since Glen Sather took over as general manager of the Rangers in 2000, he has fired four head coaches including himself. He has used the head coaching position as the scapegoat for his managerial mistakes and in turn built a revolving door behind the Blueshirts’ bench. He has spent his time as GM acting without consequences, and why wouldn’t he? If it took James Dolan as long as it did to fire Isiah Thomas, you’d have to think Sather is safe until at least 2020, no matter what product he puts on the ice.

Last February, after winning just twice in 12 games, Tom Renney became the latest casualty of the Glen Sather era, as he was relieved of his coaching duties with the Rangers sitting in sixth place. At the time, it was the only move Sather could make to shake up a club that he had allowed to go stale. He had cornered himself by yet again constructing a roster of overpaid former stars; stars that made names for themselves by achieving success away from New York. Despite proclaiming to get younger, Sather resorted to his old ways of signing aging free agents with their talent in decline, and his poor decisions from the previous summers were exposed as the level of play heightened in the final weeks of the season.

The Rangers were good enough to make the playoffs last season if Renney kept his job, just like they had been the three seasons prior. But in a state of panic, Sather hit the gong on Renney’s tenure in a last-second attempt to wake up an uninspired team that was simply going through the motions. With Sather’s “superstars” underperforming and the team watching their postseason berth slip from their grasp, a 2-7-3 slump was a good enough reason for Sather to pull the trigger on Renney. If Sather refrained from making a coaching switch, it was likely that blame would fall upon him if the Rangers missed the postseason. By putting a fresh face behind the bench, he could direct the media’s attention at the new coach and use the new coach as his newest scapegoat for his own mistakes if things didn’t work out.

On Feb. 23, 2009, Sather fired Renney and brought in John Tortorella, who went 0-3-1 at the helm of the Rangers on an interim basis in 1999-00. Just five years removed from winning the Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay, Sather was bringing a big name to Broadway. He wasn’t giving someone their first NHL coaching job like he did with Bryan Trottier in 2002-03, and he wasn’t rolling the dice with an unknown. He was bringing in a proven coach and someone whose in-your-face style and zero-tolerance policies were the anti-Tom Renney. Sather thought that Tortorella would love being back in New York and that New York would love Tortorella back. So far it hasn’t worked out that way.

Tortorella finished what Renney started by keeping the Rangers in the postseason picture last year. But in the first round, the team let a 3-1 series lead slip away to the heavily favored Capitals, and Tortorella became the focal point of the series after some unruly behavior with Capitals fans. A series that was supposed to be about the play of Henrik Lundqvist and Alexander Ovechkin became centered around the coach who was just over a month into his new job, and it looked like Tortorella and New York weren’t going to the be the match Sather hoped for.

With Tortorella in his first full season as Rangers head coach, the team has been everything it wasn’t when Renney was the coach, and it has been everything it was before Renney became the coach. The team is reminiscent of the inconsistencies that defined the organizations from 1997 until the lockout when the postseason was always just out of reach. Trying to predict which Rangers team will show up on a given night has become as challenging as predicting which Knicks team will show up. And like the Knicks, the “good” Rangers rarely show up two games in a row.

The team has been treading water all season, managing to stay in the thick of things in the playoff race, but really just prolonging their inevitable mathematical elimination, which is now creeping up fast with the recent success of the Flyers, Canadiens and Bruins.

So, my question is this: What has John Tortorella done to this point to remain as head coach of the Rangers?

I am certainly not a believer in changing coaches every season and giving coaches only one season to get their feet under them in a new city. But then again, I don’t decide who coaches the Rangers, and going by the history and the standards of the man (Sather) who does decide, it seems like a fair question.

Sather fired Renney – the Rangers’ winningest coach since Mike Keenan – for going 2-7-3 despite still being in playoff position. Renney had brought the Rangers to the postseason three times in three years and had them in sixth place in his fourth season before he was let go. He coached four Rangers teams that went to the postseason, which happen to be the only four Rangers teams to go to the postseason during the Glen Sather era.

In Tortorella’s first full season with the team, they have been chasing the Top 8 for most of the winter and the last time they had at least a 50 percent chance of earning a spot in the playoffs, according to Coolstandings.com, was Jan. 22 – well over a month ago. The team relies on success from two players – Marian Gaborik and Henrik Lundqvist –and despite outstanding seasons from both, the Rangers are still closer to be in 13th place in the East then they are sixth.

Hope is not yet lost, though it’s getting close. The Flyers, Canadiens and Bruins aren’t losing and even when they do, they don’t in regulation. Seven points separate the Rangers and the Flyers, five points separate the Rangers and the Canadiens and three points separate the Rangers and the Bruins. The Rangers have 16 games remaining and a possible 32 points available for grabs if they were to finish the season with a historical 16 wins in a row.

Since 2000, the lowest point total an eighth seed has gotten into the playoffs with has been 83 (2002-03). At that rate, the Rangers would need to average one point a game the rest of the way, and that certainly won’t be good enough this year considering the teams they are trying to catch are well ahead of that pace and aren’t slowing down.

Maybe John Tortorella’s work isn’t done in New York even though he has done little to nothing to earn another season. There is still a chance he can extend the Rangers’ consecutive postseason appearance streak to five, but time is running out on their ability to control their own fate. Coolstandings.com gives the Rangers a 21.5 percent chance of reaching the postseason entering Wednesday’s game, which is surprisingly up 5.1 percent since the league resumed play after the Olympic break. The odds are against them, but the schedule favors them in that they play Philadelphia three more times, Montreal once and Boston once with a chance to steal points from their direct competition.

During the Knicks-Hawks game the other night, Mike Breen told Clyde Frazier that he wished the Knicks could celebrate the team’s 1969-70 championship every year. Now he probably said it because it was enjoyable to talk to and be around the players and personalities from that memorable team, but he definitely also said it because that season was one of only two winning memories – the other being the 1972-73 championship – that the franchise has to live off of from the last 40 years.

This June will be 16 years since the Rangers’ last Stanley Cup celebration. The team has run out of ways to milk the memories of the 1993-94 team and run out of numbers to retire and players to recognize from the last Cup winner. After it looked like the franchise was headed in the right direction post-lockout, this season has set the Rangers back and erased any confidence Rangers fans had of returning to the finals in the near future.

It doesn’t look like the organization will have any new memories to remember and relive with Glen Sather leading the way, as his time in New York continues to be an epic disaster despite his illustrious career in Edmonton. It might not be John Tortorella’s fault that the Rangers are in the position they’re in, but eventually he will take the fall for the team’s failures, not Sather. The same thing happened to Tortorella’s predecessor and the same thing will happen to his successor.

There was nothing on Monday to help ease the devastating feeling of Sunday’s gold-medal defeat. On Monday, the Knicks allowed 74 first-half points to the Cavaliers in an eventual 31-point loss … Alex Rodriguez was linked to some sketchy doctor and needed for an FBI investigation … Jay Leno made his Tonight Show comeback in place of Conan O’Brien … Sadly, Jimmy Fallon still had his spot hosting Late Night … and I don’t even watch The Bachelor, but apparently he ruined the season finale by choosing the wrong girl. As if Sidney Crosby finding Ryan Miller’s five-hole seven minutes and 40 seconds into overtime wasn’t bad enough, the events of Monday just poured salt into the wound that Sid the Kid had opened the day before. On Tuesday, however, the gold-medal loss began to hurt a little less.

On Tuesday, the Yankees had their annual team outing, which resembled a 12-year-old’s birthday party, meaning it was the eve of the team’s spring training opener. And the tri-state area hockey teams resumed play after a two-week layoff, going undefeated on the eve of the NHL’s trade deadline.

The Rangers began a stretch of 20 games in 42 days by scoring four goals in a win against the Senators without Marian Gaborik. The Islanders helped improve their chances in the Eastern Conference playoff picture with a 5-3 win over the Blackhawks on the Island. And the Devils held off the West’s best in San Jose with a 4-3 victory against the Sharks.

With Wednesday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline looming, it was the last chance for teams to decide whether they would be buyers or sellers, even though the local teams have pretty much cemented their roles for the rest of the 2009-10 season.

The Devils are built to win now and they know it, as does the entire hockey world. Lou Lamoriello sees a team with several key players in their mid-30s and a franchise goalie who is nearing 40. It’s why he went against his own philosophy and the culture he instituted in New Jersey to acquire Ilya Kovalchuk in a deal that cost him Johnny Oduya, Niclas Bergfors, Patrice Cormier, a first-round pick in 2010 and a second-round pick in 2010. The Devils’ window of opportunity is slowly closing and this year might be one of the last chances the organization has to capitalize on the Brodeur Era. Lamoriello knows what he has and he is going for it all this season, even knowing that Kovalchuk’s time in New Jersey might only last through the team’s last game this season.

The Islanders, on the other hand, are built for the future. With a strong core of John Tavares and Kyle Okposo, the Islanders aren’t about to sacrifice the talented youth they have lacked since the lockout for a 19-game boost that will land them a matchup with the Capitals in the first round. The Islanders have been a pleasant surprise this season with a team of mostly 20-somethings, managing to stay in the thick of things in the playoff race. If the Islanders can find a way into the playoffs, they will have exceeded all expectations and completed an unlikely turnaround after finishing with a league-worst 61 points last year. And if they fall short of the playoffs, no one will be disappointed since they weren’t expected to achieve this much success this season anyways. The Islanders know where they stand in the Eastern Conference and what they will be able to achieve in the near future with their abundance of young talent.

That brings us to the Rangers. They aren’t really ready to win now, and they aren’t built for the future and don’t appear to be building for the future. They remain in the same spot they have been in for the past five seasons – good enough to make the postseason but not good enough to win in the postseason. There is a good mix of young and old on the Rangers, but to say the Rangers are a team capable of going the distance, well, it would be wishful thinking. Tuesday’s win over the Senators only added more confusion in the search to find out who the Rangers are, because no one – Glen Sather included – knows what to expect from the Rangers or when to expect to it.

Right now the Rangers are either …

Team A: A team that has won three straight, is peaking at the right time and is primed for the stretch run after finally realizing its potential after five months of inconsistent play.

Or …

Team B: A team that has won three straight, but a team that picked the wrong night to play above its head and in turn, only masked its offensive problems.

If the Rangers are “Team A” and have actually found the rhythm that all of New York has waited for them to find, then there is no need to alter the roster or change the team’s current landscape. If Glen Sather thinks that the team he saw smoke the Senators on Tuesday is the team that will come to play for the remainder of the year, then he doesn’t need to tinker with the team’s current makeup.

But if the Rangers are “Team B,” then they picked the wrong night to play like a team built to win this season since there aren’t any games remaining before the deadline for the Blueshirts to show their true colors. Sather needs to know if Tuesday’s win was false hope or a sign of things to come. He needs to know if the Rangers can make a run the rest of the way as currently constructed, and he needs to decide quickly.

Had the Rangers laid an egg in Ottawa and started the stretch run off with a weak effort, it would have been easy to say that without Gaborik the Rangers are a disaster, and it would have made it easy for Sather to make some sort of move on Wednesday to shake up the roster. Instead, the Rangers took it to the Senators without their leading scorer, and no one knows if this team is OK without Gaborik and a contender with him. No one knows whether or not this team should go forward as is, or if change is needed.

In all likelihood, Sather will stand pat at the deadline, and I’m not sure that isn’t the right move. I’m also not sure it is. I’m not really sure what to make of the Rangers’ situation or what to expect of them over the next six weeks. I’m not sure that there is a move that can be made at this point that will take the Rangers to the next level and get them through March and April and beyond. And even if a move of that caliber exists and Sather makes it, there is no guarantee that he will be able to justify it in the postseason since the Rangers are currently on the outside looking in.

If Sather has been able to maintain his position with the Rangers to this point, it’s safe to say that there isn’t a trade he can make or pass up that will cost him his job. There isn’t a level of success the Rangers need to achieve or a playoff round they need to reach for him to remain general manager.

Sather put the Rangers into this awkward position of being a perennial five through eight seed in the Eastern Conference, and it should be on him to get them out of their five-year funk. Just don’t count on it happening by 3 p.m. because at 3:01 p.m., chances are the Rangers won’t be a team built to win now or a team built for the future. They will still just be the same old Rangers. Who that is, I’m not sure?