Out of Rangers' regular lineup, Zac Jones and Jimmy Vesey find it frustrating

GREENBURGH — Peter Laviolette has heard the discontent — both public and private — expressed by Zac Jones and Jimmy Vesey.

He knows that the young defenseman and veteran winger want and need to play.

But at the same time, the Rangers’ coach believes his responsibility is to the group as a whole rather than individuals. There is ground that must be made up in the Eastern Conference playoff race if the Rangers are to play important games in late April. And May. And perhaps June.

“Right now it’s about winning hockey games,” Laviolette said during the Rangers’ optional practice Friday morning at the MSG Training Center before the team headed to Boston ahead of Saturday’s nationally televised midafternoon game. “That’s what we’re concerned with.”

It is not an especially jovial group of Rangers (24-22-4, 52 points) who will meet the Bruins (25-22-6, 56 points), who are one point behind the Eastern Conference wild-card spots.

Part of it is because of back-to-back regulation losses on home ice to Colorado and Carolina to end what had mostly been a strong month of January on a somewhat sour note.

Then there are the individual pleas Jones and Vesey have shared with reporters.

After Thursday’s practice, Vesey told the New York Post that “it feels like I have no role or purpose on this team. I’m kind of dying by being here.”

Vesey, 31, has been a healthy scratch in the last eight games as Laviolette has gone with a fourth line of Matt Rempe, Sam Carrick and Adam Edstrom.

“I talked to Jimmy yesterday before he addressed you guys,” Laviolette said. “Jimmy’s an important piece to this team. He’s proven that. Right now we’ve gone with the lineup. Like all the players that aren’t in there, we just ask him to keep working hard and wait for their opportunity.”

Vesey’s appeal echoes that of Jones, who told Newsday on New Year’s Day that “it’s tough” not playing.

Jones, 24, last dressed for the Rangers’ 5-0 loss to the Devils on Dec. 23, and the recent additions of Urho Vaakanainen (acquired from Anaheim in the Jacob Trouba trade) and Will Borgen (acquired from Seattle in the Kaapo Kakko trade) have made Jones the team’s seventh defenseman.

“It’s really tough,” he said at the time. “I’m just generally a pretty easygoing, happy person, and no matter what is going on in my life, I’m going to try and come to the rink with a smile on my face .  .  . But it sucks.”

The issue for Jones and Vesey is that the Rangers have been winning. They enter Saturday’s game having won eight of 14 games in January (8-3-3) and earned 19 of a possible 28 points in the process.

“It’s not about ‘we’re going to make this move for this reason.’ Every day we’re putting [players] in the lineup we want to put in,” Laviolette said. “It’s not to slight anybody else, either. Because if we have to make changes based on whatever — somebody’s sick, somebody got injured — we’ll make those changes and it would still be ‘this is the lineup that’s going to get us a win tonight.’  ”