RALEIGH, N.C. — Regarding the Rangers, who have allowed six goals overall and four at five-on-five to the Hurricanes entering the fulcrum Game 5 on Thursday.

1. In a lot of ways, Sebastian Aho is Carolina’s equivalent to Mika Zibanejad, an upper-echelon, first-line center who sometimes is an afterthought when the conversation turns to the NHL’s elite. They’re both on the power play. They both kill penalties. They both recorded 81 points this season, though Aho scored 37 goals to Zibanejad’s 29. They both are a large focus of the opposition. It is not quite as simple as: if you stop Zibanejad/Aho, you stop the Rangers/’Canes, but the proposition is not all that far-fetched.

Aho scored the tying goal late in Game 1 of this second-round playoff series, then clinched Game 2 with an open-netter. But the Blueshirts have done an outstanding job making it difficult for the 24-year-old Finn, who lasted until 35th overall in the 2015 entry draft. The Blueshirts have taken time and space away from Aho the way the Hurricanes have done with Artemi Panarin.

The Rangers, by the way, did not have a selection until 41st overall in 2015. They had sent their first-round pick to Tampa Bay in the Marty St. Louis deadline deal a year earlier. They (in)famously tapped Ryan Gropp. Still a prospect! (No, not really.)

Carolina matched Aho’s unit — Seth Jarvis on one wing, Teuvo Teravainen on the other since he switched places with Andrei Svechnikov in the third period of Game 1 — against Ryan Strome’s line at home. The Rangers matched with Zibanejad at the Garden and have essentially split the assignment on defense between the Adam Fox-Ryan Lindgren and K’Andre Miller-Jacob Trouba tandems.

The Blueshirts have done a terrific job on Svechnikov as well, keeping the 2018 second-overall pick off the scoresheet entirely as he skates with Vincent Trocheck and Martin Necas.

Still, despite his team’s success in stifling the Hurricanes’ top guns, head coach Gerard Gallant wasn’t accepting plaudits. He wasn’t even accepting the notion that the Blueshirts might be game-planning even a smidgen against Aho.

“I wouldn’t say we limited him,” the coach said at the Rangers’ training facility before the flight south. “We don’t look at Carolina and say we’re going to take care of this one player. I mean, they’ve got a lot of good hockey players.

“We talk about their line a little bit, but we’re more about we’re going to do. We try and match a little bit, but I wouldn’t say there’s a big game plan in trying to shut down Aho himself.”

The Rangers are packing the middle of the ice, dropping their wingers lower and lower. Their D-zone coverage resembles the system under John Tortorella. Their goaltender, Igor Shesterkin, resembles the 2011-12 Henrik Lundqvist. Their forwards are busting back and they are not afraid to spend some time in their own end.

If that’s not a game plan designed to stop Aho, OK, but it sure is producing residual benefits.

2. No, it is not on Gallant to get the Zibanejad-Chris Kreider-Frank Vatrano unit away from Jordan Staal’s estimable checking unit with Nino Niederreiter and Jesper Fast on the flanks as the matches now are in Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour’s hands.

You’re not going to have the Rangers hopping on and off the ice in response to Carolina’s personnel. That would result in chaos for a team that has never employed such a tactic through the first 93 games. Furthermore, even as much as the Devils liked to match, no one pulled the Patrik Elias-Jason Arnott-Petr Sykora “A Line” off the ice when an opposing checking line came on.

The responsibility rests with Zibanejad, Kreider and Vatrano — who had his best game of the playoffs in Game 4 — to meet the challenge and produce offense against the Staal unit. That is what upper-echelon players do in the playoffs.

3. Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think, that on a night when the Blueshirts had their worst faceoff performance of the series by winning only 18 of 51 at the dots (35.3 percent), that Carolina scored its lone goal almost directly after Zibanejad beat Staal cleanly on a defensive-zone draw? It was just like rain on his wedding day.

4. The Blueshirts are two victories away from that second-rounder owed to Winnipeg in the Andrew Copp trade turning into a first-rounder. The Rangers will be happy to pay that price for No. 18, whose Game 4 represented his best performance since he suffered a lower-body injury against the Islanders on April 21.

The question is: What price will be right for both parties to keep Copp from hitting the open market as an unrestricted free agent on July 13?

Does five years at around $25 million sound right? To general manager Chris Drury, probably. To Copp, I’m not so sure.