All in all, the first road trip of the Rangers’ season was a positive starting point for a work-in-progress team.

Leaving Columbus with a 1-1 record heading into their home opener Monday night against the Coyotes, the Blueshirts saw new aspects of their game come to life and old habits resurface.

Two lopsided contests showed the spectrum of this team at this moment, which isn’t the worst thing in the world less than a week into the season.

The Rangers obviously cannot help if Ryan Lindgren is out of the lineup due to injury, but at this point, the team knows they’ll have to overcompensate without him.

Like a house of cards, taking Lindgren out of the lineup often causes the whole team to collapse defensively.

Such was the case in Columbus on Saturday night, when the Blue Jackets wreaked havoc around the net and breezed through the neutral zone rather consistently all game.

It’s more of a testament to defensive depth than it is the Rangers’ defense as a whole, especially if you take into consideration how locked down they were in the season-opening win in Buffalo.

“I don’t think it was a bad game out of us, I thought it was just a few cracks in our coverage that gave up a little too many high-end chances,” Adam Fox said Saturday night. “Overall, I thought we were in their zone a lot, I thought we had some good looks. Maybe you want to get a few more shots and a little bit more traffic. You give a team enough chances, a breakaway here, odd-man rush here and there, they’re going to capitalize.”

The fact that Lindgren participated in Friday’s practice and skated in the morning on Saturday is a good sign for his return.

It’s likely that the Rangers didn’t want Lindgren to play if he wasn’t 100 percent, and it was an excuse to give Zac Jones a look.

Head coach Peter Laviolette even said he doesn’t want anybody sitting for too long when he was asked about replacing Tyler Pitlick with Jimmy Vesey, who was scratched opening night.

There were certain moments in the loss to Columbus that Laviolette chalked up to flukiness rather than carelessness, citing that he thought the Rangers were trying to do the right thing.

That’s a positive takeaway for a coach who is still working with his team to master his system.

The Rangers scored eight goals and racked up 73 shots through the first two games, which are numbers of a high-volume shot team.

While the offense was consistently threatening in Buffalo, that push didn’t come through as fervently for a majority of the loss in Columbus aside from the third period, which is not a new trait for the Rangers.

What was new was the better than 50 percent faceoff-win percentage the Rangers posted this past week, including a strong 63.3 percent showing against the Blue Jackets.

For most teams, that would be neither here nor there, but for the Rangers, it’s a major takeaway from their start to the season.

A mixed bag of performances is what a team wants early, so attention can be paid to where it’s needed.

All in all, the Rangers accomplished that.