WASHINGTON — Penalties have piled up for the Rangers in recent games, and it’s beginning to cost them greatly.

Except for the victory against the Bruins on Thursday, the Rangers have received a minimum of eight penalty minutes in their last eight games, with six consecutive games accumulating 10 or more penalty minutes.

Over that same span, they’ve had two contests with at least 20-plus minutes in the box.

During Washington’s 7-4 triumph over the Rangers, both teams were penalized four times. However, the Capitals managed to convert two power plays into goals, while the Rangers failed to capitalize on their opportunities.

Mika Zibanejad emphasized the importance of evaluating the penalties being taken, pinpointing whether it’s due to excessive aggression or unnecessary reaching. He stressed the need to address the factors leading to penalties, acknowledging the negative impact it has on the team’s performance. Zibanejad highlighted the significance of minimizing penalties to enhance the team’s overall performance and chances of success.

On the Capitals’ second stretch with the man advantage, after Brett Berard sat in the box for holding, Washington wreaked havoc around Rangers goalie Jonathan Quick before Dylan Strome buried a rebound to knot the game at one-all at the end of the first period.

Quick was furious and immediately voiced it to the refs, presumably because of all the traffic in and around the crease or Alex Ovechkin getting tangled up with Quick’s stick leading up to the goal.

Additionally, just 13 seconds after Sam Carrick pulled the Rangers within one, 3-2, in the second period, Ryan Lindgren was called for a delay of game for flipping the puck over the glass.

Forward Connor McMichael scored on the Capitals’ subsequent power play.

Washington ultimately went 2-for-4 with the man advantage on Saturday while fending off all four of the Rangers’ opportunities.

When the Rangers trailed 3-1 in the second period, Will Cuylle banged home a feed from Filip Chytil from behind the net.

After taking a timeout to further assess the goal, however, the Capitals successfully challenged for offside. The review took quite some time, but it was determined that the play was offside.

“It’s too many this year for us,” Chytil said. “Like for our line, it’s already the third or fourth goal which they take away from us and it’s like three goals from [Cuylle] that they take away from him. Of course, it’s not helping to you, even the team. You could go 3-2 and you could be close. Another small thing, another close challenge takes it away. But then we just forget about it and we were hungry to score a goal, and we did [score] one, we could score more. But how I said, it’s behind us today and we come to the rink tomorrow and try to be better than today.”

The Rangers got a fortuitous break seven minutes into Saturday’s game when Capitals goalie Logan Thompson flubbed a clearing attempt right to Chris Kreider, who shot it back into an empty net from long range to take a 1-0 lead.

The goal was Kreider’s 13th of the season.

Quick stopped 21 of the 27 shots he faced in the loss.