When it happened — when Alex Ovechkin buried still another puck in a career littered with buried pucks — he thrust his arms to the Capital One Arena rafters, where his No. 8 will someday reside. His teammates, all of them, spilled onto the ice. The group hug played out in the corner, along the boards, joy in red sweaters. It was as if the 18,573 who jammed the building were in on the embrace.

When Ovechkin emerged from the throng, he skated first to his son Sergei, seated along the glass. Next stop: center ice, where he looked up into the box of Capitals owner Ted Leonsis.

Ovechkin pointed, then waved, then bowed — the salute to Wayne Gretzky.

“I’m still like a little shaking,” Ovechkin said long afterward, wearing gym shorts and flip-flops, after he cracked open a beer before a postgame news conference in which he shared the stage with Gretzky. “Still like can’t believe it. … How I said, it’s history.”

This is hockey history. Heck, it’s sports history. Ovechkin’s two goals Friday night in a 5-3 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks were the 893rd and 894th of his 20-year career. He is — both finally and suddenly — tied with Gretzky, who jumped on board for this chase only Friday.

The bows, from the “Great 8” to the “Great One,” were the first steps in passing this torch.

“Alex said, ‘Don’t get here till I get to two,’” said Gretzky, who, at least until Sunday afternoon, still owns a share of the NHL’s record for goals scored. “And I thought yesterday, ‘Gosh, we better get on the plane and get up there because he might get three tonight.’ And when he scored four minutes in, I thought: ‘Oh my God. We might be able to leave after the first [period].’”

This is heart-in-the-throat stuff, with every shot. Ovechkin has been pursuing Gretzky — and Gretzky alone — since Dec. 23, 2022, the night he scored his 802nd goal to pass Gordie Howe.

Since, Gretzky has been the only rung left. Friday, though, was the first night a crowd filed into Capital One Arena and could collectively say, “He could do this tonight.” Not eventually. Not theoretically. Right now.

So they chanted “O-vi! O-vi!” before the puck even dropped. They chanted “O-vi! O-vi!” when he waved and clapped to thank them. They chanted “O-vi! O-vi!” during a final frantic minute, when he peppered Blackhawks goalie Spencer Knight with rocket after rocket, a hat trick for the record a possibility with each blistering rip.

“You just can’t script this stuff,” Capitals Coach Spencer Carbery said. “You feel it early in the game, the energy in the building, our team was a little bit tentative. … But then there’s some indicators as that game gets going that, ‘Okay, something’s going to happen here.’ It’s right on brand with ‘O’ and how he has a flair for the dramatic.”

Take a breath, then. The first chance to pass Gretzky with a single goal will come Sunday afternoon in Elmont, New York, against the Islanders. Go scoreless there — and bet on that at your own peril because Ovechkin is now on a five-goals-in-four-games heater — and the exhale would be longer. The Caps’ next game after is Thursday at home against Carolina.

And what once felt impossible is now inevitable. Think about that for a minute.

“Hold on a second,” Gretzky protested. “He hasn’t done it yet. Can you give me 24 more hours?”

He was smiling. Broadly. Going back generations, there have been precious few pursuits like this one. Gretzky tracked down Howe, and the build for that mark was similar. Howe began following Gretzky’s Los Angeles Kings, which is one of the reasons Gretzky showed up Friday night to monitor Ovechkin, why he will be there Sunday and at every game until he breaks the mark.

“It’s great for hockey,” Gretzky said. “I’m so happy for the league. I’m so proud of Alex.”

That’s in the spirit of this sport.

Basketball and football — perhaps America’s two most popular pro sports — simply don’t hold numbers in as hallowed a position. The all-time NBA scoring record? It’s recent enough that you might remember LeBron James passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s mark in February 2023. (If you know Kareem’s number — 38,387 — you’re a true Association sicko.) You could probably guess Tom Brady is the all-time leader in passing yards and touchdown passes. But the numbers — 89,214 yards and 649 scores — must be looked up.

Baseball is the only remotely analogous situation. That sport reveres its numbers and its characters. It doesn’t take a particularly hardcore fan to be able to remember that Hank Aaron hit his 715th homer to pass Babe Ruth or that he did it off a Los Angeles Dodgers lefty named Al Downing.

Aaron’s record 755 stood until 2007, when Barry Bonds spent the summer stalking him down. In comparison to Ovechkin chasing Gretzky, that chase was joyless. Bonds was cantankerous and surly, and by that summer he had already been exposed as a user of performance enhancing drugs.

Bonds denied those charges. But as he climbed closer, he was booed on the road. His only sanctuary was his home ballpark in San Francisco. Bud Selig, then the commissioner, was personally close to Aaron and was publicly tepid about Bonds taking over such a hallowed record. There were questions about what Aaron’s reaction would be, and only after Bonds hit No. 756 — at home in San Francisco — did Aaron appear on a video board with a pretaped message for Bonds.

On Friday night, this felt celebratory — for Ovechkin, sure, but for the man he was matching, not to mention the team, the town and the sport. So many of the Capitals’ best moments — Ovechkin’s hat trick that ended with his 800th goal, all of the series-clinching wins in the run to the 2018 Stanley Cup — came on the road. The crowd Friday night frothed from before the puck dropped. Maybe they finally would get to see it.

“It’s special moment,” Ovechkin said. “It’s great for hockey. It’s great for D.C. It’s great for all our fans. To do it here in Washington, it’s fun.”

The explosion came just more than six minutes into the third period. Ovechkin’s office has forever been the faceoff circle to the left of the goal. It was there that John Carlson — a teammate for 16 of his 20 seasons — found him with a pass. It was there that he fired the shot that birthed No. 894.

Every time Ovechkin jumps over the boards now, it’s an event. His every shift has, for 20 years, brought possibility. Now, his every shift could bring history. Hang on a bit longer. There’s just one more until the unattainable is attained.