The inaugural winner of the “Mr. Ranger” Award shares something in common with Rod Gilbert, the player for whom the award is named. That is, neither Chris Kreider nor Gilbert himself ever became the team’s captain, though multiple vacancies occurred throughout their respective tenures on Broadway.

“Your value as a leader is not dependent on what letter you’re wearing or even if you have one,” Kreider told The Post a day ahead of the season opener against the Lightning at the Garden. “When I came up and we had that veteran core, nobody cared who wore the ‘C’ or the ‘A.’

“Rick Nash, I don’t even think he had a letter for about four years and he was as much of a leader as we had on those teams. I’ve been pretty adamant that naming Jacob [Trouba] as captain was the right move, and it would have been before last season with all of the things he does both here and away from the ice. I think it’s great for him and for us.

“But I’m confident in the role I have as a leader. I know what I bring.”

Kreider is on the cusp of his 11th season after he made his debut at age 20 during the 2012 playoffs and followed that with a cameo the subsequent season. He is the senior Ranger, passed over for the captaincy when the post became vacant following Ryan McDonagh’s exit at the 2018 deadline. Now, it seems there is a finality to this.

Kreider, like Gilbert, will never be his team’s captain. And so I asked him Monday, following the final prep for the regular season whether he would consider that a hole in his résumé.

“I would never think of it that way. That would not even occur to me. Absolutely not,” said No. 20. “The hole in my résumé is not winning the Stanley Cup. That’s the hole in my résumé.

“And I’m going to do everything in my power to rectify that this season.”

The Rangers are coming off a 110-point 2021-22 season that culminated in an unexpected, thrilling ride to the Eastern Conference final, in which they were beaten in six games by two-time defending champion Tampa Bay after they grabbed a 2-0 lead in the series and a 2-0 lead in Game 3.

When it ended, Kreider was distraught. He’d come close in 2014, with a trip to the Cup final. He’d come close in 2012 as a neophyte and then again in 2015 with trips to the conference finals. It took seven years to even get back to that place. Close, but close doesn’t count. Two days following the 2022 elimination, the winger could barely string together a sentence at his breakup day press briefing.

“I don’t think that feeling of disappointment is something you ever get over,” Kreider said. “You carry it with you, or at least I do. It’s not as if I woke up one morning and it was gone.

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“There are so many positive experiences along the way, you have to appreciate both sides of it. For me, it was very similar to 2013-14. The character of the teams were very similar. You have to be able to build on the accomplishment and understand what went right and why it went wrong.”

Kreider deflected accolades as expertly as he did pucks last year. There was as much chance of him addressing his progressively mounting goal total as there was of him turning into a chariot. He soft-talked the accomplishment when he hit the magic number.

And so, the response Monday was exactly as you would expect when I asked if he had thought about getting there again and whether he believes there is now pressure for him to equal his 52-goal extravaganza.

“Fifty is a number. I think about repetition and cause-and-effect,” said Kreider, who scored a franchise record and league-leading 26 power-play goals as the NHL’s most effective net-presence. “The focus is on getting to spots to position myself for chances, whether it’s the back post on a cross-slot pass or boxing out the D-man so I can have my stick and body in the right spot.

“I’m playing moneyball. It’s about percentages, about how many times I can get into a certain position and how many times my teammates will be able to make the play if I am in the right spot. I play with such great passers that I trust that the percentages will work in our favor if I can be where I’m supposed to be a certain percentage of the time.

“The short version is: I think about the process, not the result.”

That also applies to the season and to the hunt for a championship.

“It’s about coming to the rink every day wanting to be better as an individual and as a team,” Kreider said. “You can romanticize our run last year as much as you want, but we also know that one bounce the other way and we could have been out in the first round. It’s not about having illusions, it’s about putting in the work. It’s about being honest with yourself.

“I want to win a Stanley Cup with the Rangers. That would complete the résumé. That’s it. That’s what this year is about.”