Ken Dryden, a former goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens and member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, was a member of Canada’s Parliament from 2004 to 2011. His books include “Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador, and the Future of Hockey.”

Goal scorers score goals. They can’t help themselves.

Put a puck on the ice, in a practice put 20, goalie ready, or goalie paying no attention, or goalie not even in the net, and a goal scorer, like a neat freak, has to tidy up, has to put every puck in that net. It’s a need.

And he won’t just put it in the net — he’ll drive it, he’ll blast it.

As of Sunday afternoon on the road against the New York Islanders, Alexander Ovechkin is the greatest goal scorer in NHL history. Statistically, it’s a fact; by personality, by style, by instinct and being, it’s absolutely fitting.

For a long time, breaking the record seemed like it would never happen. Certainly not this year, almost certainly not ever. Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894 goals was just too far away. At a certain age, a gap like this between the leader and the chaser seems to grow, wider and wider, as the months and seasons pass. At a certain age, a player’s capacity to close the gap seems to shrink, then shrink some more.

Injuries happen, they just do. But the older the player, the longer they take to heal. They hurt more, and take more out of you. The gap and the timeline grow punishingly even further apart. The quest comes to seem cruel, until it fades to disappointment, and acceptance.

It wasn’t going to happen, too, because the Washington Capitals weren’t good enough. They had been good through most of Ovechkin’s career, reaching the summit once, winning the Stanley Cup in 2018, but then they were on the other side of the mountain. Trying to hold on, but sliding, more each year, surely needing to slide further before attempting another ascent.

But how could they do that? These would be Ovechkin’s final years. He had been the making of the team, the making of the franchise. He had to be celebrated. He had earned that. Even if the Caps couldn’t win, they would need to make these years the best, the happiest, they could be for him. The team would have to support him, bring in a few veteran players, even if that meant trading away prospects and promise, pushing the future a few more years ahead. This had to be about now.

That strategy almost always turns to disaster. The holes are too big and too many. The team struggles, and struggles, until it becomes just too clear, to the fans, to the media, to the players, to the star himself, that this is not going to work. And everybody’s stuck. All that’s left is to play it out.

But that didn’t happen with the Caps and Ovechkin.

The Caps are good. They’re winning their division and were the first team in the NHL to clinch a playoff spot. They might even end the season with the league’s best record. A Stanley Cup is not out of reach. Ovechkin scored six goals in his first 10 games, then nine in his next eight. The grind of pressure was off, the joy of pressure was on. Then he broke his leg. Injuries rarely happened to the young Ovechkin. This happened to Ovechkin at 39. But when he returned six weeks later, he scored in his first game, and his second.

It’s really hard to score goals in the NHL. The first 175 feet of ice seem as open as a frozen lake. The last 25 feet are like college kids jamming into a Volkswagen Beetle. The only space you’ve got is the space you fight for. That’s where goals are scored. It’s Ovechkin’s home. His broad, bull-like body takes the punishment — but any pain is masked, made irrelevant, by the sheer pleasure of putting the puck in the net.

And Ovechkin has one other home. There, he does have space. Inside the faceoff circle to the goalie’s right, especially on a power play. There, he can just set up. His opponent knows he’s there. The goalie knows he’s there. But as the puck pinballs around from player to player, and from threat to threat, the defenders’ focus has to shift, and then the puck finally finds him. He’s coiled and ready. And when he lets loose, it’s not so much with a slap shot as a full-body launch. The puck seems to have the same need to go past, or through, the goalie, if necessary, to find the net.

Then the celebration. On his face, in his whole body, deeper than joy, the pure, primal ecstasy of the goal scorer.

Breaking the record was a lot to ask. This whole season has been too much to ask. In almost every other case, in every sport, when a monumental milestone is approached, it’s little by little. Game after game, month after month, with a slog of inevitability, the excitement of it slowly drained away until the final moment. Not this time. Ovechkin earned the bigness of the moment. Good for him.