There is still time for the loss of Adam Fox to reflect in the Rangers’ record, which was tied for the third best in the NHL when the sun came up Friday. 

Despite skating without their No. 1 defenseman, however, the Blueshirts have gone 2-0-1.

That has come without the help of Filip Chytil (injured reserve) and Igor Shesterkin (minor soreness), as well. 

The Rangers’ brace for impact after Fox’s placement on long-term injured reserve with a lower-body injury has been eased by another defenseman whose price tag is $8.675 million less than the club’s No. 1 blueliner: Erik Gustafsson. 

Gustafsson has posted two multi-point games and racked up a goal and four assists since filling in for Fox. 

The power play hasn’t really lost a step.

Defensively, the Rangers have largely kept it tight. And they are still getting offensive production from a top-four defenseman. 

“If we need him to, he’ll be more than capable of jumping in,” head coach Peter Laviolette said of Gustafsson unprompted after Fox was injured in the Carolina game on Nov. 2. 

Laviolette confidently asserted that before it was even certain that Fox would miss a minimum of 10 games, which is now down to seven. He spoke with the sort of assurance that a coach could only have from legitimate familiarity with a player. 

After coaching Gustafsson for 61 games last season in Washington, where he recorded the second-highest point total of his career with seven goals and 31 assists, Laviolette was high on the 31-year-old Swede when they were reunited in New York. 

There’s an apparent trust between Gustafsson and Laviolette, who has charged the usual third-pair defenseman with all of Fox’s responsibilities.

Gustafsson has assumed Fox’s minutes and defensive matchups next to Ryan Lindgren, as well as his spot on the top of the first power-play unit. 

In the 5-3 win over Detroit, the Rangers’ top power play unit scored two goals, on one of which Gustafsson sent the shot that Chris Kreider tipped in. He’s played Fox’s usual role as puck distributor quite well despite being a left-handed shot as opposed to Fox’s right. 

After notching an assist on Vincent Trocheck’s 1-0 score in the first period of the Rangers’ 4-1 win over the Wild on Thursday night, Gustafsson now has three goals and six assists for nine points in 13 games so far this season. 

“Obviously, he likes to jump up on the rush,” Lindgren said of Gustafsson before the two even skated on a pair together. “He’s incredibly gifted offensively. But with saying that, he’s very good defensively, too. He’s responsible. I think we’ll do a good job of working together and talking things out.” 

Fox’s landing on long-term injured reserve was the most earth-shattering injury news the Rangers have received in some time.

The cascading effect was supposed to be immediate and devastating, but it hasn’t hit yet — and it might not at all. 

So long as Gustafsson continues to step into such tremendously large skates to fill, the Rangers just might make it out of this stretch unscathed.