WASHINGTON — Think about some of Alex Ovechkin’s contemporaries. Nicklas Backstrom turns 37 this month, and he took his last shift in an NHL game a year and two weeks ago, his resurfaced hip no longer able to support his once-elite game. T.J. Oshie turns 38 in December, and he had to will himself into last season’s playoffs with a back that was eternally a shift away from giving out. He almost certainly won’t play again.

Ovechkin turned 39 in September. He’ll play the 15th game of his 20th NHL season Wednesday night against Toronto. His tally from the first 14 games: 10 goals. Entering play Tuesday, only five players in the league had more. Their ages: 23 (Montreal’s Cole Caufield), 27 (Buffalo’s Tage Thompson), 28 (Toronto’s William Nylander), 29 (Florida’s Sam Reinhart) and 31 (Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov).

Professional hockey is a young man’s game. Unless you’re Ovi.“I know I can’t imagine doing it at 39,” said Tom Wilson, a Washington Capitals teammate for a dozen of those seasons who’s now all of 30. “I don’t think there’ll ever be anybody like him again.”

Ovechkin isn’t proving that he can score at an advanced age. He’s re-proving it. He can no longer score a goal and have it be just the XXth of his season. They all now become the XXXth of his career, because each is one closer to Wayne Gretzky’s NHL record of 894.

Just 31 to go.

Ovechkin entered the season needing 41 goals to tie Gretzky, 42 to pass him. At 39, that seemed preposterous. In the history of the game, only one player in at least his age-39 season — defined as turning 39 before Jan. 31 — had ever scored as many as 40 goals. That was Gordie Howe, who piled up 44 when he was 40 (and played until he was 52).

Shoot, only three other players 37 or older had managed 40 goals: Ovechkin two seasons ago, when he scored 42, and Johnny Bucyk and Brendan Shanahan, who both netted exactly 40 in their age-37 seasons.

Ovechkin’s current pace is for — get this — 58 goals. Call it unsustainable. Then consider this: He has played his past 50 games at a 54-goal pace.

As he’s 38 turning 39? Come on.

“To me, it’s your ability to score a lot of different ways,” Shanahan said by phone this week. “Every once in a while, you have to sort of make an adjustment to where you go on the ice, to how you shoot it, to the positions you put yourself in. You don’t get away from your core strengths, but you have to be a little bit of a moving target as you get older.”

Which is what Ovechkin has done. Shanahan mentioned — and every Capitals fan knows — how important Ovechkin’s blistering and blinding shot from the left circle has been for his entire career. But two decades in, he no longer wheels over his office chair and expects to do all his business from one spot.

“Getting to good spots with his line, being in good position, being predictable for one another so that he can get four or five shots in high-quality areas” are all paramount, coach Spencer Carbery said. “And then the other part, I think — this is probably the area that I’ve worked with him the most on — is getting to the net and getting to the inside more often.

“Because if he hangs out right there for all of his five-on-five minutes,” and Carbery pointed to the left circle on the Caps’ practice rink, “it’s really hard to score five-on-five from that faceoff circle. … If you want to score goals, you’ve got to get to the inside, and he’s done a nice job as he’s gotten on in his career of mixing some of those goals in.”

So a mixture of creativity and a willingness to get to areas that are difficult to establish yourself matters. But given that Ovechkin has scored more goals than all but one person to lace up skates, and given that the conversation has recently shifted from if he would pass that person to when, there has to be more than systems and strategies. There has to be something innate.

“Whatever rate your body may be deteriorating or declining, your love for scoring can’t,” said Shanahan, whose final 40-goal season of a Hall of Fame career came in 2005-06 with Detroit. “If anything, your love for scoring and your love for the game increases — or it should increase.

“So, for me, the biggest attribute that Ovi has is not his shot or his strength or his power — and those are all elite, elite, elite. His greatest assist on the success of his career is his passion. He loves it. You can just see it, and you saw it when he was a rookie. He loves to score. He loves to hit. He loves when his teammates score. He loves the game of hockey, and that is very, very apparent.”

At 20, when he posted the first of his nine 50-goal seasons? Sure, fling your body into the boards to celebrate because you’re indestructible. But at 39, as the gray-bearded father of two? To be scoring with this frequency at this age takes all the physical attributes that helped him get the first 863 goals of his career. But he also should be appreciated for the mentality it takes to push forward as he closes in on 40.

“You can’t break him mentally,” Wilson said. “He just keeps going. I mean, [he’s under] all the pressure in the world coming into this season, and he just shows up and just keeps doing it. You talk about mental strength. You talk about physical strength. You talk about,” and he thought for a bit, “greatness. It’s greatness.”

That has been true for a long time. It should be more appreciated now. I asked Carbery what he would think if he could watch video of Ovechkin but without the “8” on the back of his jersey, as if the coach were scouting an anonymous opposing player.

“I would not think he’s 39,” said Carbery, who’s all of 43. “You can’t even wrap your head around the age and being able to play in the best league in the world and the pace of play nowadays.”

Wrap your head around it because it’s not only still happening. It shows no signs of stopping. And there are endlessly fascinating ways to break it down.

Such as this last one: Guess how many goals the great Gretzky scored after his 39th birthday.

Give up? That would be zero. He had retired.