TJ Oshie is the heart of the Washington Capitals, and right now it feels like that heart is getting ripped out.
By the Numbers
| Summary | |
|---|---|
| 12 | goals |
| 13 | assists |
| 52 | games played |
| 16.9 | average ice time |
| On-ice percentages | |
| 44.4 | 5-on-5 shot-attempt percentage |
| 43.8 | 5-on-5 expected goal percentage |
| 40.8 | 5-on-5 actual goal percentage |
Isolated Impact by HockeyViz
About this visualization: This image by Micah Blake McCurdy of hockeyviz.com shows how the player has impacted play when on the ice. At the top of the image is the team’s offense (even strength at left, power play at right) and at bottom is the team’s defense (with penalty kill at bottom right). In each case, red/orange blobs mean teams shoot for more from that location on the ice, and blue/purple means less. In general, a good player should have red/orange blobs near the opponent’s net at top, and blue/purple bobs near their own team’s net at bottom. The distributions in middle show how the player compares to league average at individual finishing, setting up teammates to score, and taking and drawing penalties. The number at center is Synthetic Goals: a catch-all number for the player’s impact.
Player Card by All Three Zones
About this player card: This image from Corey Sznajder of All Three Zones shows how the player compares to league averages in different microstats in the defensive, neutral, and offensive zones. Blue bars mean the player has a higher rate in that statistic compared to league average, and orange means a lower rate. The numbers are Z-scores, also known as standard deviations, indicating how far the number is from league average, where more than two standard deviations means the player is on the extreme edge of the league.
Player Card by Evolving Hockey
About this player card: This card from Josh and Luke of Evolving Hockey compares the player to league averages based on their impact on on-ice statistics. GAR means “goals above replacement,” where “replacement” means an average player called up from the AHL. xGAR is the same figure but assuming league-average goaltending. The numbers at top are the player’s percentile ranks overall and then for offense and defense alone.
Player Overview by NHL Edge
About this visualization: The NHL’s advanced statistics program, Edge, tracks player and puck movement. At left are the player’s numbers in various statistics along with the average number for that same stat among players of the same position and the player’s percentile rank in it. At right is a radar chart for various statistics, where the bigger the shape the better the player performs in those measures.
Fan Happiness Survey
About this visualization: At three times during the season, RMNB shared an open survey with fans, asking the following question for each player: “On a scale from 1 to 5, how HAPPY are you to have this player on the team?” The numbers above show the average score for the player in each survey period.
Peter’s Take
Man, this sucks. I don’t want to write this.
It took about two weeks for Oshie to win me over when he first came to DC in 2015. He had elite puck-handling skills, he worked hard without the puck, and it felt like he always had a smile on his face. You couldn’t not love him.
All of those things are still true in 2024, but everything else has changed. Oshie missed a third of the season with an injury that has held him back for years. He can still juggle the puck and release it lighting-quick from the slot during the power play, but his mobility has dropped and his durability is in shambles.
Weird thing is – when Oshie was healthy, I thought he was fantastic. There was his quasi-legendary run after he returned from treatment: six goals in seven games, including a thrilling hat trick, but Oshie also played well in the season’s opening weeks (when he wasn’t on the ice with Nick Jensen). But when he wasn’t feeling good, you could sense the struggle.
Actually, I take that back. We had no idea what Oshie was going through. What he revealed in his exit interview was harrowing. When his back is bad, Oshie cannot pick up his children. He’s stuck in the bathroom, peeing in bottles. That’s the price of a 16-year-long career that included Olympic heroics, a Stanley Cup, and several thousand butt slashes.
Oshie has one year remaining on his contract. I don’t want him to play it. Not because of any cynical agenda for salary-cap maneuvering, I just want him healthy and happy. He’s given so much to this sport and this team, and it would break my heart if he doesn’t have a long, happy, healthy retirement.
Then again, if he’s really truly feeling good come September, I’d love to watch TJ Oshie play hockey again. He’s the best.
Osh on RMNB
- On the new coach: “It worked out great for us, kind of a reset, a new system that’s a little more friendly for our squad. Obviously, we’d like some more goal scoring, but system-wise we adapted to that pretty good.”
- A mondo hit.
- In December, Oshie went on injured reserve. It didn’t seem to be from something that happened during a game, and that’s usually a bad sign.
- Oshie was skating again a week later, but he didn’t play.
- In early January, Oshie returned to Minnesota to get treatment for an undisclosed injury. Oshie said he’s had that treatment many times. It’s a chiropractor.
- A few days later, he was back practicing in a normal jersey.
- Soon he was back and scoring game-winning goals.
- And then:
- He had some good chemistry with Pacioretty and Strome.
- Oshie and Warroad had been on the forefront of neck protection all season, and USA Hockey adopted a motion to require them in youth hockey.
- On February 18, Oshie scored his 300th goal.
- And less than a week later, without contact, he got hurt again.
- Carbery on the concern for Oshie’s injury: “Fairly high.”
- Oshie was listed as week-to-week and placed on injured reserve.
- But he is planning to play in a golf tournament.
- Oshie returned to play again in mid-March.
- As we approached his 1000th game, the Caps sang his praises.
- But it wasn’t certain he’d even suit up for the planned milestone.
- And then:
The entire Capitals team gave TJ Oshie pregame butt slashes before his 1,000th NHL game
- There was much celebration.
- On TJ1K: “I can’t thank everyone here enough. Everyone that’s reached out on social media, my family sitting up there in the corner, family and friends–I love you guys. What an amazing day that you all have made it for me. So I love you guys. This is a dream come true for me.”
- But I want to emphasize a second quote from that same piece: “There was a couple different instances where I thought that maybe getting to this point was in jeopardy, but through phenomenal support at home: from my wife and kids and close friends…and through chiro in [Minnesota], chiro along the way on the road trip last week, a couple different ones, training staff, teammates, everything, they all made this possible for me.”
- And then he was out again, but not for long, but then he was out again.
- He returned for the final playoff push. (He had one goal in the final month, 11 games, of the regular season and none in the playoffs. Six points in that span.)
- But that one goal, an empty-netter, eliminated both the Penguins and the Flyers from playoff contention.
- In the playoffs, Panarin hit Oshie high. Panarin was not suspended. Oshie said he loved the hit.
- After elimination:
TJ Oshie last player to leave the ice after Capitals eliminated in playoffs
- I’ll let Oshie end it: “In my mind, it would be hard for me to ever for sure say that I’m… I’m stepping away from the game. I’d love to play next year but it will need to be, I will need to come back, with somewhat of a guarantee that my back won’t be… it’s hard putting everyone through this situation from my family at home to the team trying to figure out a lineup to young guys getting called up and going down. I’d like to find an answer and a fix to the problem before making another run at it.”
Your Turn
Will Oshie be back? Should Oshie be back?
