As 2025 arrives, there are two essential threads to every Washington Capitals game: Did they win? Did Ovi score?

The answers in Tuesday’s New Year’s Eve matinee against the Boston Bruins at Capital One Arena: yes and no.

The former is more important for this unexpectedly interesting and promising season. The latter is more important for a developing (inter)national story.

The tallies for each: With a grinding 3-1 victory over the hardened-and-heavy (but struggling) Bruins, the Caps have 25 wins in 37 games, more than any team in the NHL’s Eastern Conference. And Alex Ovechkin — in his first game on home ice since Nov. 13, five days before he went out with a broken bone in his leg — is stuck on 17 goals for the season and 870 for his career.

We say “stuck on 17 goals.” It’s a ridiculous notion. He’s 39, and he has those 17 goals in all of 21 games — a 66-goal pace over the course of 82 games. He won’t play a full allotment this year because the leg injury cost him 16 games already. But even after failing to get one of his seven shot attempts past Boston goalie Jeremy Swayman — three were on net, three went wide, and one was blocked — the pace is dizzying. Wayne Gretzky and 894 goals are in sight. Stay tuned — every night.

Tuesday reminded the expectant and jubilant home crowd of 18,573 that Ovechkin doesn’t have to score for the Caps to win. Likewise, Ovechkin’s pursuit of Gretzky’s record doesn’t have to distract from the organization’s seemingly attainable goal of being one of the league’s best teams, a unit capable of pushing deep into the playoffs.

“We’ve got to prepare for these type of games because the teams are prepared a little more for us,” said winger Aliaksei Protas, whose breakout season continued with a pair of goals Tuesday. “ … We’ve got a real good team. Everyone is a warrior in that group. We want to win, and I think we just got to stick together. We’ll succeed, and we will have a pretty good chance for success every game.”

There are clichés in all of that, but there’s also truth. At times last season, Ovechkin’s march toward Gretzky felt more like a plod. The Capitals needed to take out a loan to score a goal. The captain clearly seemed burdened by a limited roster. Through his first 21 games in 2023-24, he had all of five goals — not just a dozen fewer than he has this season but three fewer than he ever had in that many games in his career.

Ovechkin surged in the second half and finished with 31 for the season. The Caps sneaked into the playoffs — and then were promptly swept out by the New York Rangers. They underwent an eventful summer of roster overhaul. But until they took the ice in the fall, there were reasonable questions about both how the new additions would blend with the old guard and how that might benefit or drag down Ovi’s pace.

Now, the team’s success and Ovechkin’s success go hand-in-hand. It’s a gleeful combination: an obvious Hall of Famer seeking a legendary record while playing for one of the best teams in the league. Ovechkin needs 25 goals in the Caps’ final 45 games, a pace of .556 goals per game that is still below his career rate of .602.

So how about this question: Could he break Gretzky’s record in the same season he makes a legitimate run at his second Stanley Cup?

In September, that question would have been laughed out of the bar rooms in Toronto and Montreal and wherever else the hockey cognoscenti drink their Molsons. As 2025 dawns, it’s a legitimate and fascinating idea to ponder.

Back to Tuesday.

“We’re struggling right now with our game,” Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. “It’s no secret.”

In some ways, that’s true. The Capitals are 4-4-0 since Dec. 16, treading water. After scoring four or more goals 15 times in their first 24 games, they have reached that total just three times in the past 13. Carbery has the blueprint for how he wants it to look, and it’s not from last year or from another team. It’s these same players wearing these same sweaters from maybe six weeks ago.

But before they get back to their A-plus game, shouldn’t they get some credit for winning with less than that?

Which they did when Ovechkin was out. Which they have now done in two of the three games since he returned: a solid victory at Toronto, followed by a lackluster first period in which you almost could see the lactic acid in their sweat less than 22 hours later in Detroit, followed by Tuesday’s blue-collar performance against the Bruins.