If 2024 is going to be the Rangers’ year, it did not start the way the club likely envisioned.

Opening the new year with a 6-1 loss to the second-place Hurricanes, the team on their heels in the Metropolitan Division, the Blueshirts suffered their fifth defeat of the season of four-or-more goals Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.

This was just the 10th regulation loss of the season for a Rangers team that has been perched atop the NHL for weeks, but it was yet another trouncing in a season that has seen one too many of them.

When the Rangers do lose — as few and far between as those losses have been — they tend to lose mightily.

If the Rangers are looking for a New Year’s resolution, that may be a good place to start.

“A lot of it was probably self-inflicted,” Rangers captain Jacob Trouba said. “Just turnovers and not enough grind or real compete. It’s what’s going to happen when you play games like that. There’s no easy games, especially a divisional game at home. There’s no reason for us to show up and play that game.”

The Canes did what the Canes do best.

And as a result, they left town just five points behind the Rangers (two games in hand) in the division.

With the loss, the Rangers also slipped out of first place in the NHL as the Bruins’ victory over the Blue Jackets pushed Boston ahead.

Carolina was opportunistic all night and wore the Rangers down with its signature relentless forecheck. Led by Andrei Svechnikov’s two-goal performance, the Hurricanes managed to score at perfectly timed moments to severely deflate the home team.

That’s all the Canes have been doing lately, as this was the third time they’ve scored five or more goals in their last four games.

“I think we’re capable of more, but they’re a good team that plays big and strong and physical and don’t make a lot of mistakes — and they didn’t,” head coach Peter Laviolette said. “We had to take what they gave us or what we could generate.”

The Hurricanes’ third goal, which came from Jordan Martinook at the 6:32 mark of the second period after a miscommunication between Erik Gustafsson and Braden Schneider, made it a 3-1 game and proved to be a backbreaker.

It may have been early on, but the Rangers were still trying to recover from giving up two power-play goals in the first period.

Chris Kreider notched the Rangers’ lone score when he tipped Trouba’s long shot from the top of the zone less than five minutes into the middle frame.

The goal not only tied the longest-tenured Ranger’s career-long point streak of seven games, but it was also Kreider’s 166th goal at MSG to surpass Rod Gilbert for the most in the building’s history.

But the Hurricanes just continued to pile it on in the third period, when the Rangers gave up three more goals while getting outshot 10-7.

The final frame will surely be a starting point for the Rangers when they return to practice on Wednesday.

“If I’m going to go after a period, it’s the third period. I hate it,” Laviolette said. “They played a simple game, they flipped it out, they put it behind us. We got caught turning pucks over and chasing down things, trying to chase the game. The third period was not who we are or who we want to be and that’s where we’ll focus.”