All around him, there was deep disappointment and perhaps a measure of devastation in the visitors’ locker room. The first-place Rangers had just been eliminated from the 2012 playoffs by the upstart Devils in the sixth game of the conference finals on Adam Henrique’s overtime goal at the Rock.

This marked the end of the Black-and-Blueshirts, who had overachieved under head coach John Tortorella, finishing second overall in the NHL with 109 points before surviving the Senators and the Caps in a pair of seven-game series that enervated the squad.

There had been a demanding training camp. Then a demanding 82 games in the regular season and 20 more in the playoffs. They’d been grinding it out for eight months.

There was silence in the room, later occasionally punctuated by a handful of low-talking players being interviewed by the media.