TJ Oshie sits on the precipice of a career achievement as the Capitals continue their Western Conference road trip.
After scoring a hometown goal Thursday against the Seattle Kraken, Oshie is set to play his 1,000th NHL game Saturday against the Vancouver Canucks. He will become just the 390th player in league history to hit the milestone.
Oshie’s big night will come less than a month after he scored his 300th career goal against the Montreal Canadiens, reaching another major goal for the season. Now in his 16th NHL season and his ninth year in Washington, the 37-year-old winger has become a cornerstone of the Capitals’ veteran core.
“He’s a big part of our team on the ice and off the ice,” said Alex Ovechkin. “He’s a warrior, leader. Happy for him.”
Longtime teammate John Carlson — himself just eight games away from a thousand — reflected on what it meant to log so much time on NHL ice.
“I think anybody that’s been around, you think about it and you want to get there,” he said last month. “And you see throughout your career some other guys — whether it’s on other teams or your own — reach it and can’t help but to want to achieve that yourself. So it means a lot of different things and I think that’s what makes it so special: it’s not just an accolade here or there, a good year. It’s a really good league and if you stick around for that long you’re a) at the top of the league and b) have put in so much dedication and work to get to that point.”
Oshie has spent close to a month within spitting distance of his 1,000th contest: he reached game no. 996 on February 22 against the Tampa Bay Lightning before a non-contact injury held him out of the lineup for several weeks. Injuries have kept Oshie off the ice for significant chunks of the last few seasons, including 24 games so far in 2024. But to Carlson, Oshie’s perseverance makes Saturday night’s milestone even more important.
“That’s that dedication,” he explained. “There’s going to be some good nights and there’s going to be a lot of bad days throughout a career, whether that’s with or without injuries and how the team’s doing. There’s so much that goes into just putting your equipment on and showing up on the ice. It’s perseverance, it’s dedication, rehabbing, everything. It’s not an easy thing to do and then it’s not easy to keep jumping back in against the world’s most talented people and players.”
“The way he plays, you cheer for the guy,” Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan added. “His character, he plays hard. He’s not the biggest guy in the league, and he’s played a hard thousand games. It’s not like there’s an easy stretch in there. The way he goes about his business, it’s not easy to get to 1,000, so I have a lot of respect for him getting there.
More than half of Oshie’s games have come with Washington, where he formed a vital part of the 2018 Stanley Cup-winning roster. Despite playing the first seven years of his career for the St. Louis Blues, Oshie ranks 20th in all-time Capitals scoring, earning 379 points (191g, 188a) for the franchise.
Head coach Spencer Carbery recalled his memories of the Oshie trade, which he witnessed as the then-head coach of the South Carolina Stingrays, and his importance to the team since.
“I knew of him from St. Louis,” he said. “I knew he was a good player. Little bit of combination of skill but also the power. I’d seen that in St. Louis….but I didn’t register the impact now, looking back, that he’s had on this organization. I don’t know if anybody could have expected that.”
But as his teammates celebrate his storied career, Oshie focused on his amazement as he reaches a rare milestone in the sport.
“I am a very in-the-moment person…I never thought about the years I would play, the number of games,” he told NHLPA.com’s Chris Lomon. ”I don’t know what I would have said back when I first started.”
1000 GAMES, 301 GOALS, 388 ASSISTS, 689 POINTS, 55 DONUTS, 6 HAT TRICKS, 539 PENALTY MINUTES, 2046 SHOTS ON GOAL, 100 BUTT TAPS, 47 GAME-WINNING GOALS, 698 BLOCKED SHOTS, 1546 HITS, and 1 STANLEY CUP pic.twitter.com/v5OFv6eoAL
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) March 16, 2024
