CALGARY, which hasn’t made the playoffs in five years, is 13-2-2. The Blackhawks, who haven’t participated in four, and whose owner hasn’t cared about winning in 40, are 12-6-4. Phoenix, which ditched its two stars to make ends meet, is 8-6-4.

Meanwhile, last year’s two Stanley Cup finalists were a combined one game over .500 going into last night’s games, which tells you their hearts haven’t really started yet, and, for the purposes of determining who are the real Stanley Cup threats, neither has this NHL season.

Now, points are points, and in a league where 14 of 30 teams don’t make the playoffs, two points in November count the same as two in March. Before the season is over, the Rangers and Islanders, who are second and fourth, respectively, may need every one of the wins they have eaten up early.

But the experienced puckhead has learned to look at November results almost as warily as Eric Lindros regards the media. Freshness, which the Rangers have in modicum with seven new faces, and enthusiasm, which they have in abundance with so many comebacks going so well, traditionally takes the team a lot farther before another Mark Messier birthday (Jan. 18) than afterwards.

The smart handicapper waits until after the trading deadline to assess the field and a Ranger team with so many handicapped players will receive a jaundiced eye, no prediction of any man games lost with that affliction implied.

Granted, Michal Grosek is gone, immeasurably improving the chances for finally having a hockey season in New York, so maybe we should just sit back for one happy year and enjoy something that was rudely taken away from us five years ago in Manhattan and seven on Long Island. Then again, you, too, are watching Igor Ulanov, so why wait?

The Rangers are a lot more fun to watch, but when a team like Colorado, last night’s visitor, stops playing for fun and resumes the serious defense of its cup, the re-plastered smiles on the faces of Garden patrons could get thinner than the Rangers’ second- and third- line scoring.

Twenty-eight of the team’s conference leading 60 goals have been scored by the Eric Lindros-Theo Fleury-Mike York line. And despite their first-place standing, the Rangers have given up more goals than all but three teams in the conference, despite excellent goaltending.

That’s a little top-heavy in scoring for when the serious checking starts, and a little porous out the back end, despite the upgrades in talent represented by Bryan Berard and Vladimir Malakhov and the relentless bodywork of Tomas Kloucek.

Ulanov has played better than this at previous stops and may again, but at least one more guy of the stay-at-home variety would be solidifying. While the blue-collar efforts of newcomers Mikael Samuelsson and Andreas Johansson have been an upgrade, the team is still too small up front to succeed against the bigger and better teams.

The good news is that Radek Dvorak has only 13 points in 22 games, which means that even at 13-7-1, not everybody on the Rangers is playing as well as he possibly can. The bad news is that Messier just might be, and if the Rangers are to become a serious playoff team, it is inevitable that his ability to any longer anchor a serious second line is going to become an issue. So will Petr Nedved’s offensive contributions if he continues to be played with checkers.

The Rangers, standing up for each other finally, have a much greater sense of team than they have for many years, but the bigger Flyers did most of the leaning in that opportunistic Ranger victory last week, and Ron Low’s team clearly needs some beefing up. A big winger is the minimum requisite, and a big center to anchor a playoff-caliber checking line would be a parlay that would make the Rangers more than just team that can get back to the playoffs, but one that would have some expectation of success.

There still is a long shopping list for a new regime has had only a year and change to remedy a massive size and energy deficiency. The Romun Ndur era isn’t dispatched in a day.

But the reason the Garden pays Glen Sather the big bucks is because the Garden has them. The genie that magically produced a terribly needed superstar with Sather’s first wish presumably has a few left. Not that we expect miracles overnight, or anything.