This wasn’t a trade in the conventional sense, but when the Rangers exchanged Nick Bonino and Tyler Pitlick for Adam Edstrom and Matt Rempe with internal organizational moves, the bottom-six dynamic shifted just as surely as if the club had gone out onto the market to import a missing piece or two.

If we’re talking about wingspan, no team in hockey history has had a line with the combined wingspan of Edstrom, who stands 6-foot-7, and Rempe, who tops out at 6-8 and a half. These young men are not here as curiosities or novelty items.

Instead, the two young’uns are receiving pre-deadline auditions that will go a, uh, long way in determining GM Chris Drury’s course of action leading up to the 3 p.m. bell on March 8 that is just two weeks away.

Edstrom and Rempe skated on Barclay Goodrow’s flanks on Thursday night in New Jersey for the third straight match following tests against the Islanders in the Stadium Series on Sunday and Dallas at the Garden on Tuesday and here is a trivia question posed in advance of the match in Newark:

If Rempe dropped the gloves with 6-6 defenseman Kevin Bahl — who tangled with Goodrow during last year’s playoffs — would it be the bout featuring the most combined inches of two combatants in NHL history?

See, this is what keeps me up at night.

Edstrom was the sixth-round, 161st-overall selection of the 2019 draft. Rempe became the Blueshirts’ sixth-round, 165th-overall pick in 2020. They are cracked mirror images, Edstrom a native of Sweden with Rempe hailing from Calgary. And if franchise history is littered with examples of the Rangers rushing prospects, here are two examples of the organization nurturing and molding kids who might have been on the periphery of the prospect pool.

The kids have made an impact, at least in the short run. They get the puck in deep. They tend to run into anything that moves. There’s a kind of chaos created when they’re out there. Of course, it’s not all that often with head coach Peter Laviolette relying ever increasingly on his marquee athletes to get the team across the finish line.

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Entering New Jersey, Edstrom had played a sum of 45:40 in five games for an average of 9:08 per. Rempe had played a total of 9:34 in two games for an average ice time of 4:47 per. But there are no small parts to a team. Edstrom has been credited with 17 hits — one every 2:42 on the ice. Rempe has been credited with eight hits — one every 1:12.

These are Rangers?

These are Rangers.

“There are so many power play and penalty kills that takes them out of the loop but their minutes are not a reflection of them not playing well,” head coach Peter Laviolette said following the club’s 3-1 victory over Dallas on Tuesday that extended the winning streak to eight games. “I think they just add a layer to it.

“When they were out there they put it into the offensive zone, they banged bodies, they dug pucks and they were good. They were noticeable. They definitely brought a physical presence right off the bat. They get in on the forecheck and when they put it behind you, they’re coming and they’re going to bang some bodies.”

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Bonino and Pitlick were two of the veteran, minimum salary-type free agents signed on July 1 by GM Chris Drury when the club was operating under an extreme cap squeeze while needing to keep as much space on hand in order to not lose restricted free agents Alexis Lafreniere and K’Andre Miller.

Drury’s message to agents leading up to last July 1 was simple. The GM told them he had a finite number of slots to fill at around $800,000 for one year. It was first-come, first-served just the way it is at a deli counter. Bonino, Pitlick, Blake Wheeler, Alex Belzile, Riley Nash, Anton Blidh (and defenseman Erik Gustafsson) punched their tickets and Drury was able to keep Miller and Lafreniere without much fuss or muss.

But though the Rangers blasted out of the gate at 18-4-1, fissures became evident through the 11-12-2 stretch from Dec. 5 through Jan. 26 that preceded this heater. Bonino and Pitlick, who had been bottom-six staples, became place-holders in the internal exchange in which the Blueshirts got much younger, much bigger and more physical.

Beginning with Thursday, Drury, Laviolette and the hierarchy had six games before the deadline to, well, measure Edstrom and Rempe and get a better handle on whether they can be counted on for the playoffs or whether the organization will have to look elsewhere for size and strength.

So far, so big.