Rangers know they need to find home-ice urgency

The Rangers will enter Thursday as one of only two Eastern Conference teams without a home win — along with last-place Tampa Bay.

They have just one goal in their four home games and have lost three of their last four overall.

It’s hardly the start to the season anyone expected under new head coach Mike Sullivan.

And with a winless San Jose coming to Madison Square Garden on Thursday followed by a trip out west, things could get ugly in a hurry.

“We look at them as, ‘They’re gonna be desperate as hell,’ ’’ J.T. Miller said of the floundering Sharks. “It’s not an easy game. If you start thinking like that, the night’s over. We should be as desperate as anybody right now. I’m confident we’ll bring that [Thursday].”

That came after a lengthy practice in Tarrytown on Wednesday following another home loss to Minnesota.

And unlike some of their other Garden defeats, the team did not take solace from playing well in a loss, acknowledging they played poorly throughout.

Sullivan talked with the team for several minutes at center ice when Wednesday’s session was over, but declined to divulge his message to the players.

It’s no secret, though, that the Rangers have to start finding better results — not to mention goals and wins — and soon.

Asked if he felt the team has the urgency he believes it needs to thwart the slow start to the season, the captain said, “That’s the level we need to bring. We need to have that. We can’t just hope things work out. When we play an urgent game, we get results. We haven’t been scoring, but we get results. We need to bear down.”

That includes on the power play, where the Rangers have struggled for much of the first eight games, scoring on just 15 percent of their power plays (26th in the league).

“We get a few chances every game that we could or should score on and we don’t,’’ Miller said. “I’m obviously a big part of that. I need to bear down on the net a little bit harder. We’re getting there.”

Still, none of it has added up to a victory on Broadway for a team that typically has a strong home-ice advantage.

They’ve scored just one goal in those four home losses.

“It’s a small sample and we’d liked to have played better in a couple of those [games], but in a couple others, we played a hell of a game and didn’t get the result we wanted,’’ Miller said. “Do we want it to be part of who we are, a team that’s hard to play against in our own building? Of course, yeah. We’re still establishing that and we’ve got to be better and demand more of ourselves and take a little more pride at home, but it hasn’t all been bad.’’

Miller pointed to their improved play on defense from a year ago, noting they’re not “playing loose,’’ despite the underwhelming record.

“In the body of work of eight games, there’s a lot to like, but we’re not gonna be satisfied with that,’’ Miller said. “We’re under .500 [3-4-1]. We need to score some more goals and go into the areas to do that. It’s not just saying we have to score goals. We have to do the hard work and we’re gonna get rewarded. We need to do it more often.”

Sullivan also knows they need to find success at home.

“We’d like to win,’’ Sullivan said when asked if they needed a win at home Thursday before heading on the road. “I get it. Of course we want to win. Do we want to be a harder team to play against at home? For sure… We want to establish ourselves at home.”