PITTSBURGH — With a chance to grab back second place in the Metropolitan Division, the Rangers prevailed.

Now, it’s likely the Rangers and Penguins will trade places in the standings a few more times. But the Blueshirts grinded to a 3-2 win over the Penguins on Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena to hurdle Pittsburgh in the division with 91 points.

“Before the game, you look at the standings and know you’re one point behind them and you got a game in hand — and you know it’s a big game coming in here,” head coach Gerard Gallant said after the win. “We were [saying], ‘Let’s go play a good hockey game again tonight.’ Just because we beat them in our building pretty good, we knew we were going to get challenged tonight.”

To go on the road and defeat a team they scorched five days ago, which led to the Penguins furiously hanging 11 goals on the Red Wings in their next game, is no small feat. Pittsburgh was hungry for a redeeming win, but the Rangers asserted themselves again with a relentless forecheck and a tight defensive game.

This one wasn’t as chippy as the previous two meetings between the teams. Aside from a brief scuffle involving the Rangers’ Ryan Lindgren and the Penguins’ Jake Guentzel after the second-intermission whistle, the focus was on the puck for a majority of the game.

Maybe they’re trying to save it for the anticipated first-round matchup in May. There’s also one more meeting on the regular-season calendar between the clubs set for April 7.

“We know that’s a team that’s in the playoff hunt right there with us,” said Chris Kreider, who scored his league-leading 23rd power-play goal of the season to give the Rangers a two-goal lead in the third period. “All the games are [intense] at this time of year, doesn’t matter where a team is in the standings, really. The level of play and the intensity just gets ramped up, it seems, every single game as we get closer to the end here.”

The Rangers’ new-look top line of Kreider, Mika Zibanejad and Frank Vatrano continues to jell. Trailing 1-0 at the start of the second period, Zibanejad sent a slick backhanded pass to Vatrano, whose quick release from the slot beat Penguins goalie Tristan Jarry to even the score at 13:32.

It was Vatrano’s fifth goal since joining the Rangers seven games ago.

Just over three minutes later, Braden Schneider took a drop pass from Artemi Panarin and ripped one from between the circles to give the Rangers their first lead of the night.

“I [saw] Panarin make a sweet pass and lay it right on the platter to me,” the rookie defenseman said. “I didn’t even look at the net. I just shot it.”

While Panarin posted two assists and Kreider notched a goal and an assist, defenseman Jacob Trouba led the Rangers with 25:05 of ice time to go along with three shots on goal, two blocks and four hits in the win. Trouba and K’Andre Miller received a healthy dose of the Penguins’ top line in Guentzel, Evan Rodrigues and Sidney Crosby, whose power-play goal at 10:37 of the final frame kept things interesting.

Oh, and in true New Yorker fashion, the Rangers rained all over the Penguins’ night honoring recently retired Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.