WASHINGTON — On opening night of the NHL season, it might have been possible to envision a scenario in which the Washington Capitals reached the sport’s All-Star break — which this year is for a made-up tournament between four nations — and Alex Ovechkin had a realistic chance of breaking Wayne Gretzky’s career record for goals scored. It was less plausible, even with an offseason of significant roster turnover, to predict that the Caps would reach that break with the sport’s best record.

But both?

“I genuinely think that us being in the spot we are helps him,” coach Spencer Carbery said. “He’s always like this,” and Carbery held his hand level above his head, to give an indication of Ovechkin’s relentlessly high intensity.

“But it also gives him — when we’re in the spot we are, when teams are gunning for us, when every game is really, really competitive and we’re fighting for points and we want to finish with the best record we possibly can — he’s highly, highly motivated.”

The marriage of these storylines is absolutely fascinating and borderline unfathomable. With 27 games to play, Ovechkin is 16 goals from passing Gretzky’s 894. At his current 2024-25 rate of two goals in every three games played — he has 26 goals in the 39 games in which he has appeared — he would break the record around April 10, at home against Carolina.

Put another way: Ovechkin has scored 16 goals — the total he needs to pass Gretzky — in his past 23 games. Duplicate that production over the next 23 games, and it yields the same prediction: No. 895 on April 10 against the Hurricanes.

Put still another way: This is getting real. And inescapable.

“This season has been the first season that it’s just one of those things that you can’t escape,” said defenseman John Carlson, Ovechkin’s longest-tenured teammate. “It’s no matter where you go, no matter what you do, no matter who you talk to, it’s there.

“Even last year, I think we’d all have the same feeling that there’s a really good chance it would happen. But he wasn’t going to do it last year. Now, it’s kind of cool where every single goal is like a mini celebration.”

Those celebrations have extra meaning because of the Capitals’ position in the standings — and projections for the future. I’ll admit something: Last season, as the Caps struggled to score goals and to reach the playoffs, I figured this whole pursuit-of-Gretzky thing might be a slog. Ovechkin was an aging player on a mediocre team. He had scored his fewest goals in any season not shortened by a pandemic. Amassing the 42 goals he needed after 2023-24 seemed possible over two seasons. Not one.

Yet here we are. And consider the following

“I genuinely feel this way: I think his best hockey is [still] to come in this season,” Carbery said. “I think he’s going to look even better coming out of the break. That’s just my own personal opinion.”

It’s an informed one. The reason: Carbery believes Ovechkin is still working himself back into top form after he missed 16 games because of a broken bone in his leg.

Ovechkin isn’t being dragged — or dragging himself — to this record. He’s sprinting through the tape with a supporting cast that is helping the cause. In the season Hank Aaron passed Babe Ruth to become baseball’s career home run king, he hit fewer homers than he had in any campaign since he was a rookie. The season Barry Bonds hit the homer that pushed him past Aaron was Bonds’s last.

Ovechkin is 39, in his 20th season, and his pace over a full 82-game slate is for 54 or 55 goals — a total he has surpassed just twice in his career, and not since he was 23.

No wonder this is all a topic of conversation.

“I think if you ask most guys, we’re thinking about it pretty much every day, every game,” current linemate Tom Wilson said. “It’s just everywhere you look and everywhere you go. It’s just a crazy buzz around him right now. As a group, you feel it. And as a group, you want to do everything you can just to help him.”

About that: Ovechkin’s goal-scoring isn’t just helping him climb closer to Gretzky. It’s helping the Capitals be the best team they can be, which turns out to be in the conversation as the best team in the sport. This isn’t just a team trying to qualify for the postseason. This is a team that wants to do damage once there — with a brilliantly assembled roster and a growing self-belief.

“It’s been long enough into the season now that we believe this is who we are for sure — end of story,” Carlson said. “I think confidence is earned, and I think we’ve earned that confidence in a lot of ways as a team.”

They have earned it because they have never lost even three games in a row. They have earned it because they have a points percentage of 72.7, a tick better than Winnipeg’s 72.3 as the NHL’s standard. They have earned it because, while they have five losses in three-on-three overtime and three more in shootouts, those formats go out the window in the playoffs.

And they have earned it because their captain continues to score at a rate that makes Gretzky more attainable and keeps the Capitals atop the standings.

Springtime in Washington with a hockey team that matters is a lot more interesting than springtime with an also-ran. The spring that’s ahead offers an unprecedented bonus: a run at one of sports’ most hallowed records by a player leading a team on a push for — gulp — another championship. That those two stories are skipping hand-in-hand toward the horizon is nothing but a delight.