The result was there from the Rangers on Sunday in Pittsburgh, but any sign that they might soon be snapping out of the midseason struggles into a late-season push remained out of reach.

“We need to win games right now first and foremost, which we did tonight, but that’s not a recipe for winning games,” defenseman Ryan Lindgren said, via the New York Post’s Mollie Walker.

New York overturned a pair of one-goal deficits to earn a 5-3 win over the Penguins to keep the pace and stay two points behind the Ottaway Senators for the final Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference.

“We want to play a lot better 60 minutes, full complete game,” Will Cuylle, who leveled the game with a power-play tally in the first period, said. “I think our third periods have been good lately, so want to try to carry that over into next game. It’s got to be better than that.

“It’s not a good performance by us by any means. We know the standard is higher than that, so we need to be better.”

The game nearly got away from the Rangers in the second with goaltender Igor Shisterkien, who was chased by five first-period goals Saturday against the lowly Sabres, making several crucial saves in the period that saw the Blueshirts outshot 19-4 in the period and 31-9 through the game’s first 40 minutes.

"My evaluation was, it was awful,” Lindgren said of the team’s second period. “We were in the D zone the entire time. We were giving them chance after chance. Everything about it was awful."

As hockey goes, it was the Rangers who got the goal in the period when J.T. Miller pounced on a bouncing puck that was misplayed by Penguins defenseman Pierre-Olivier Joseph at the edge of their zone leading to a 2-on-1 with the forward wristing one right by a bored Joel Blomqvist to put New York ahead.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the Rangers season if the good fortune in the second didn’t come to a crashing end as Pittsburgh scored twice in the first 211 seconds of the third period.

New York responded, taking advantage of the Metropolitan Division’s cellar dwellers with a goal 50 seconds later to level the score before Adam Fox gave them a lead they wouldn’t lose with under nine minutes to play.

The Rangers needed one final bit of hard work to stave off the Pens as defenseman Will Borgen put his body on the line to stop an empty-net goal after the puck squirted behind the net.

“It was just a messy play,” Borgen said. “I knew Shesty was kind of on the other side, so I just laid down. [Pittsburgh defenseman Kevin Hayes] was close to me, so I wasn’t too worried about getting one to the face. I didn’t think he’d lift it, but I got lucky I blocked it.”

With 25 games to play the Rangers have the chance to add to their points tally against another team below them in the standings against the Islanders.

“We’ve got another big one on Tuesday, a team we’re battling with in the standings right now,” Lindgren said. “We have to play a heck of a lot better, for sure.”

Chris Kreider a late scratch

The longest-tenured Ranger took part in warmups on the ice and in the line rushes ahead of Sunday’s matinee in Pittsburgh, but was ruled out shortly before puck drop with an upper-body injury as final lineups were due.

The Rangers announced the 33-year-old forward was day-to-day.

Kreider scored and logged 15 minutes of ice time in Saturday’s heavy defeat in Buffalo and skated with the U.S. in the 4 Nations Face-Off final loss to Canada on Thursday. The veteran appeared in two games for the Americans during the tournament, scoring 35 seconds into Monday’s game against Sweden

He had been dealing with a few injuries earlier this year as back spasms kept him out for three games in November.

He was a healthy scratch in late December before he landed on the injured reserve (upper-body injury) for four games in January.

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