GREENBURGH, N.Y. — Brad Richards is getting ready for the Rangers’ latest Game 7 the same way the star forward did years ago when he was a kid with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Well, almost the same.

“I’m probably a little more nervous the older I get because I was kind of young and stupid at that time,” the 32-year-old Richards said Friday. “It’s a fun day. You cherish the chances you get to be in them. You treat it like a great day in your life. You don’t get many chances to do something like that at Madison Square Garden; Game 7 on a Saturday night. Where else would you want to be?”

Hard to argue.

The Rangers are 4-3 at home in the first two rounds of the playoffs against Ottawa and Washington, but it was on the familiar Garden ice that New York knocked out the Senators in Game 7 to set up the Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Capitals.

The Rangers know that a season in which they finished first in the East will have a hollow feeling if they don’t win Saturday and advance to face Atlantic Division-rival New Jersey in the conference finals.

“It’s one game now,” Rangers captain Ryan Callahan said. “It doesn’t matter really what happened in the rest of the series and what happened last game. It comes down to one game that you have to win.

“There is no other group I would rather be doing this with.”