On June 9, two days after the Washington Capitals won their first Stanley Cup, TJ Oshie was one of six Caps players to celebrate by getting a tattoo at Tattoo Paradise DC.
Jakub Vrana and Andre Burakovsky’s tattoos were well documented on social media, but Oshie’s tribute to the team wasn’t known… until now.
In an interview with Uproxx’s Ryan Nagelhout, Oshie revealed that he had Wario tattooed on his leg. The explanation is worth the read.
No, it’s actually just part of the playoffs for me. I don’t have any time at home to play video games with two little ladies running around the house. But it was something that started, gosh I don’t know, it’s been around for a while now. We even did it in St. Louis, but it wasn’t Mario Kart we played other games.
In the playoffs you get a team suite when you’re on the road because you’re playing in the same city a couple times in a row, which you don’t do during the regular season. So they kind of make a suite for us, and I got kind of addicted, I guess, to playing Mario Kart with some of the fellas.
It was kind of our routine in between games on the road to get a couple games in. Well, I guess more than a couple for some of us. But it was just kind of a bonding thing that we had, but yeah, it was fun and now I got Wario tattooed on my leg.
So Oshie got the evil Mario inked on his body as a tribute to what the team did together in their downtime.
We first learned of the Capitals’ exploits on Mario Kart in May 2017 via Jay Beagle. After Penguins forward Phil Kessel called Beags an “idiot,” Beagle publicly challenged the hot-dog loving Stanley Cup champion to a game of Mario Kart to settle their differences.
In the interview, Oshie also spoke about his drinking through his shirt party trick.
“Yeah, I picked up, I don’t know, along the way somewhere,” Oshie said. “It might have been in college or one of the early years in St. Louis. I did it at a team party that we had one time and then it seems like some of the other guys on the team always wanted me to do it for them or with them at other team events.
“So when it came time for the parade and other guys started going up there and setting the tone before me I figured I’d try it out,” Oshie continued. “I’m gonna save the next one for when we win it again.”
That sounds good to me.
