Game 1 was choppy and chippy, and that’s the way this Rangers series with the Capitals is probably going to continue to the end.

Sixty minutes in and it kind of reminds me of the first-round series against the Penguins in 2015, when the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Blueshirts won in five games, each victory coming by the score of 2-1.

There was little open ice in that Penguins series in which the Rangers won both Games 4 and 5 in overtime, Kevin Hayes getting the winner in Game 4 in Pittsburgh before Carl Hagelin got the Game 5 series winner at the Garden. It was a grind and became more of one after the Rangers dropped a 4-3 Game 2 at home.

But that Rangers club, a mature one that had experienced nine rounds the previous three tournaments, stayed the course. And for that, in Round 2, the Blueshirts got the Caps in what became perhaps the most compelling of the 12 series in which the 2012-15 clubs played.