IF ERIC Lindros, courtesy of a Dan McGillis shoulder or a Bob Clarke evil eye, were to collapse in a heap last night and never play again, Glen Sather ultimately can send out his resumes without shame.

The Rangers’ hopes of making the playoffs for the first time in five seasons assuredly last only as long as Lindros does, but they weren’t getting in with any of the three guys they gave up for him, either.

Kim Johnsson has been a nice fit for the Flyers, who needed a defenseman who can move the puck, Jan Hlavac has only 20-goal hands to go with 40-goal speed and Pavel Brendl, who was a healthy scratch last night, has an excellent chance to become the most unfinished project in Philadelphia since Darryl Dawkins.

“I think Pavel has made some giant steps in the things we have asked him to improve on,” said Flyers’ coach Bill Barber. “I admire him for that focus, which is far stronger than when we first got him.”

In other words, any scant sign the kid has a clue, the Flyers’ call in the Mummers and have a parade. Not that they didn’t know what they were getting. In fact, Clarke made pretty much the best trade he could for a talented player with questionable durability, who few teams could afford, and who offered a short list of places he would go.

But popular perceptions, and hysterical talk-show rantings notwithstanding, the Flyers were taking a bigger risk than the Rangers. Watching Lindros so far revitalizing their once and soon-to-be-again archenemies is not Philadelphia’s worst nightmare. That would be losing to the Rangers in the playoffs, an almost inevitability at some point, should Lindros, only 28, live happily ever after in New York.

Last night’s first sighting of Lindros in red white and blue was only the first opportunity for the player in whom they invested $15 million, six players and two No. 1 draft choices to grow into a championship that never materialized, to twist the knife into the persons who discredited and exiled him.

But should the number of paybacks be cut short by further head trauma, Sather will only have to go back to the drawing board, not the suicide hotline. The next concussion isn’t necessarily the last. And even if it is, the Rangers’ risk is measured against not much of a downside. Hlavac and Johnsson are not being missed and Brendl is hardly can’t-miss as a prospect.

So, unless you want to believe Sather could have or should have been willing to put Radek Dvorak into a deal for Jaromir Jagr, or that the Rangers had an excess of the young, cheap assets the Penguins wanted and took from Washington, Lindros was the best way for Sather to go to revitalize the Rangers in a hurry, at minimal cost to the franchise’s future.

Despite popular perceptions that the GM was out playing golf, making niggling offers, arrogantly assuming Pittsburgh had no other place to go with Jagr, Sather was, in fact, willing to put Mike York into a package and Penguin GM Craig Patrick wasn’t interested.

Jagr, who pouted his way off a Stanley Cup semifinalist, who has had his share of injuries, had a risk factor, too, if you were going to put him on a stripped-down team he would have to carry with little help. Under the circumstances, this was the best deal. And if Lindros holds up, anything surrendered in the deal is never going to be an issue anyway, except of course to he and the Flyers management.

It was interesting to see how Lindros, who didn’t always crank up the emotion of the big occasions while a Flyer, handled last night. But that was just round one, regardless. This could turn into one of the deepest and ongoing grudge matches in sports history, even if all parties on both sides did not want to acknowledge it.

“I wasn’t around when all that [acrimony was going around],” said Barber. “But I don’t hear guys talking about it in the sense of anything negative.

“The Flyers versus the New York Rangers always has been a good rivalry. Things get out of hand when people start writing it’s so-and-so against so-and-so. It’s sad because it takes away from the game itself.”

On the contrary, with the shape the Rangers were in, the game itself here needed this terribly.