DETROIT — In the end, this night belonged to Henrik Lundqvist.

The Rangers’ 37-year-old netminder turned back the clock and notched a 33-save shutout to register a 1-0 win over the Red Wings on Saturday night.

When the injury scare to the club’s best trade piece, Chris Kreider, turned out to be something the team doesn’t seem overly concerned about following a knee to the head that put him out of the game early in the second period, then the spotlight was left for Lundqvist.

As the Rangers’ three-goalie carousel keeps spinning, this was the first start for Lundqvist since Jan. 11, and just his second start since Jan. 4. He then turned it into his first shutout since Nov. 11, 2017.

“I’m not going to lie, it was really good to come back here and play well,” Lundqvist said. “It’s been a pretty tough month for me. I haven’t seen a lot of action. For almost 14 years, I was used to, ‘Go out there and play.’ Now it’s different. I try to adjust to it. But in the end, you want to be out there and help the team.

“So it was a good feeling to be out there tonight.”

You could see the joy in the faces of Lundqvist’s teammates after the game, the locker room a rare festive environment with music and laughter. These are players who have watched Lundqvist, the face of this franchise for a decade and a half, take a backseat recently to the up-and-coming Igor Shesterkin, who backstopped the Rangers (25-21-4) to the 4-2 win over the last-place Red Wings (12-37-4) during the first leg of this back-to-back on Friday night at the Garden. And there has also been a good amount of playing time for Alexandar Georgiev, who might move before the Feb. 24, but who will not be given away just for the sake of crowdedness.

For all the Rangers’ talk about wanting to make the playoffs, the focus is still on the future, which is why it was such a tumultuous moment when Kreider took an inadvertent knee to the head from teammate Mika Zibanejad at 1:42 of the second period and didn’t return. But the Rangers weathered the storm, which was different from the mostly haphazard play that has brought the Rangers to this point of dim postseason hopes.

“We got great goaltending from Hank, and I liked our third period. We weren’t anywhere near as dumb as we were in the first two,” Quinn said. “We won a 1-0 hockey game, which I don’t think anyone here thought we were capable of doing.”

When they returned on Friday, the Blueshirts were coming off a nine-day break that encompassed All-Star weekend and the bye week. That game was sluggish, and the one a night later in a different city was hardly any different. The only time the Rangers could manage to beat goalie Jonathan Bernier — called up from the AHL Saturday morning — was on a power-play, a Zibanejad jam-shot from in front at 12:13 of the first.

Lundqvist did the rest, making a sprawled-out stop on Dylan Larkin in the waning seconds of the second period, and making an emphatic glove save on Patrik Nemeth early in the third. Lundqvist had pushed to play the first game back from the break, but Quinn gave it to Shesterkin, who had played two games for AHL Hartford during the break while Lundqvist relaxed.

“[Lundqvist] was lobbying to play that first game while he was sitting on the beach drinking pina coladas,” Quinn said. “I knew he was dialed in and excited to play.”

Lundqvist knew he was dialed in late in the game, too, with the echoing sounds of pad saves hastening the memories of all those low-scoring games the Rangers won with him in nets.

“Being used to being out there, it’s different, for sure,” Lundqvist said. “In the end, you try to understand the big picture, but also what the other guys are doing; they’re playing well.

“So we’ll see who’s in the net the next game.”