On Feb. 23, after Alex Ovechkin scored his first goal of the afternoon against the Edmonton Oilers and the 880^th of his career, he skated to the glass at a raucous Capital One Arena and fist-bumped a little boy through it. Some thought the boy was a lucky young fan, the temporary object of Ovechkin’s unbridled enthusiasm. It took two more goals, and Ovechkin’s twin beelines to the same happy boy, for them to realize that the bond between them was more than chance.

The boy was six-year-old Sergei Ovechkin. He is Alex Ovechkin’s first-born son and already the heir to all the gifts and burdens his name will bring him.

Now, absent a fickle turn of hockey fate, he is only a few beautiful, bittersweet weeks from also being the son of the greatest goal scorer who ever lived.

Before Ovechkin’s hat trick against the Oilers — a one-timer, a wrister, and an empty-netter, an arsenal-defining trifecta — the Washington Capitals projected he’d break Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894 career goals against Carolina on April 10, with four games in the season to spare.

In the hours after, Ovechkin’s history-making timetable was recalculated: The latest projections had him eclipsing Gretzky against Chicago on April 4, with six games remaining.

The formerly impossible had become inevitable.