Momentum is the game you bring today, not the last fraction-of-a-second miracle you pulled off yesterday.

And so this is a lesson learned for the Rangers, who turned in a low-energy, kind-of-careless effort at the Garden on Sunday in losing 2-1 to 27th-overall Montreal following a pair of stirring comeback victories on Broadway earlier in the homestand against estimable Minnesota and Dallas.

“We did not play to our level tonight. We played a bad game,” said Artemi Panarin, who scored the Blueshirts’ lone goal that tied the match 1-1 at 16:03 of the second period on a delayed penalty. “We have to recover mentally and be ready for [Monday] in Columbus.”

The Blueshirts were out of sync. They spent way too much time on the outside, for the most part unable to penetrate a rather tenacious performance on the other side. Sam Montembeault was all but spotless in the Montreal net, but rarely had to contend with second chances while facing a misleading total of 40 shots, seven off Panarin’s stick.

“We didn’t get to the areas where you score,” said Filip Chytil, who was just about as ordinary as most of his teammates in the blah contest. “Not many chances there. Too many from the outside.”

There were too many from the outside on one end and too many glorious opportunities yielded at the other. Igor Shesterkin was brilliant in this one and stood head-and-shoulders over his teammates while making a half-dozen spectacular saves that kept the Blueshirts in the game.

“Igor was fantastic but we need to help him,” Chytil said. “We can’t leave him with those two-on-ones and breakaways.”

The Canadiens scored their first goal when Kirby Dach finished a power play three-on-two from the inside right hash mark at 4:54 of the second period after Jacob Trouba was denied on a two-on-one. They got the winner at 8:56 of the third period when the exceptional Cole Caufield got his 26th of the year from in front by converting Nick Suzuki’s centering feed while both Trouba and partner K’Andre Miller chased behind the net and Jimmy Vesey couldn’t get there in time.

That was a breakdown on top of the myriad other mistakes the Blueshirts routinely committed despite holding a 67-45 edge in five-on-five attempts, per Natural Stat Trick.

“We were sort of flat, a little sleepy,” said head coach Gerard Gallant, who declined to use the flu that had been going through the team as an excuse for the disappointing performance. “The energy level didn’t look great, but I’m not going to yell and scream at them.”

Alexis Lafreniere was around the net and had one Grade A chance in the first period of his second game up with Mika Zibanejad and Kaapo Kakko in Chris Kreider’s absence. But No. 13 was denied by Montembeault — the official sheet does not credit the winger with a shot — on a rebound of a shot off the post.

The rest of his game featured false starts and too many turnovers in his own end, though Gallant did have him on the ice when the coach pulled Shesterkin for an extra attacker with 1:56 to go.

The coach did make a couple of adjustments down the stretch, notably moving Vitali Kravtsov off the Panarin-Trocheck unit and onto the bench for the final 9:00 while Vesey moved up.

This was a game of diminishing returns for Kravtsov, who was not particularly effective at all in what was his seventh straight game on that line and spent most of this match on the perimeter.

Unless the Rangers have reached the conclusion that Lafreniere cannot play right wing, it is possible that No. 13 could take Kravtsov’s spot with Trocheck and Panarin once Kreider is cleared to return. The Panarin-Trocheck-Lafreniere unit was intact for 12 games the first month of the season, compiling a 59.06 Corsi rating, a 55.06 shot share and a 50.48 xGF while on for seven goals for and 10 against.

The power play failed on its two opportunities stretching the oh-fer to 11 over the last four games, getting three shots in this one with the man-advantage. Opposing penalty-kill units continue to pressure up high on the setup and lean toward taking away Zibanejad’s one-timer from the left circle. The underperforming power play ranks smack-dab in the middle of the league, 16th, at 22.1 percent. That’s not even remotely good enough for this group. If the execution does not improve, personnel changes must be contemplated and initiated.

The Rangers are 13-3-2 in their last 18. They have a seven-point playoff cushion. Sunday, they ran out of miracles and comebacks. Sunday, they didn’t earn either.