Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery attended TJ Oshie’s retirement speech at Washington Harbour on Monday and was joined at the event by several other important members of the team, including Brian MacLellan, Chris Patrick, Nicklas Backstrom, and John Carlson.
Afterward, the Jack Adams Award-winning coach gushed about Oshie’s playing style and his significance to the team during an interview on Monumental Sports Network.
“The great quality from a coach’s perspective is TJ Oshie is one of those rare players that does it all,” Carbery said of the retiring right wing. “And he’s the example that you continue to use in the film sessions, in the locker room, because he was the guy that has this incredible skill set, ability with the puck, could score a huge goal, could make a play on a two-on-one, could tuck it under the bar if he gets into a scoring situation, but he also did all the little things right. He also was a guy that could penalty kill, that would put his body on the line to break up a play, block a shot. He was the guy that was in the right spot defensively. He was the guy that was laying out to prevent a goal.
“All the things as coaches we love, but very rare that we get this combination of skill and ability and offensive talent and other small details of it. That’s going to be his legacy that carries on for years to come. Osh was that type of teammate that he thought about his teammates; he wanted to show up and set a good example. We talked about his work ethic every single day, and how hard he competed every single game, and how much he battled through injuries to stay on the ice. And so the Connor McMichaels of the world, the Aliaksei Protases of the world, the Marty Fehervaries have watched that and learned from him, and that’s where Osh’s impact as a player, yeah, the 2018 and all the things and playing 1,000 games, but he’s going to have young players that are telling his story for years to come about how much they learned from Osh.”
Carbery was one of the few privy to see Oshie late in his career as the forward’s body broke down in the final years of his contract. Oshie’s hard-nosed style led to a chronic back injury, where some days he struggled to stay upright.
“That was tough to watch,” Carbery said. “I’ll never forget the night in Tampa Bay, when he just basically, no one touched him, and he couldn’t move. And he was being helped off the ice.”
The game, Oshie’s 996th in the NHL, was a February 22, 2024 tilt at Amalie Arena. Midway through the third period, Oshie made a cutback move in the offensive zone and passed the puck to Alex Ovechkin on his backhand before crumpling to the ice in pain.
“He was on his floor, bare floor in his hotel room in Tampa Bay (afterward),” Carbery said. “And that just tells you this guy was a warrior.”
With the clock loudly ticking on his career, Oshie returned to game action 18 days later against the Winnipeg Jets, as one of his biggest goals before hanging up his skates was reaching 1,000 NHL games played. During that West Coast road swing, the Capitals made stops in Oshie’s former childhood stomping grounds.
After playing in game no. 999 and scoring a goal in front of his family and friends in Seattle, Oshie was set to hit the milestone in Vancouver during a March 16, 2024 game against the Canucks. However, the day was a battle, epitomizing Oshie’s struggles toward the end of his final Capitals contract.
Oshie took the ice for the morning skate but was forced to leave early after another flare-up of his injury, leaving his status unknown going into his potential milestone game. Given how close Vancouver was to Oshie’s hometown of Everett, Washington, there were lots of family in town for his big night.
“What no one knows about is through that, the morning skate, so now all of a sudden, he has to get off the ice, and that whole afternoon, TJ touched on it,” Carbery said. “The athletic trainers are trying to do everything they possibly can to get him ready to play a game and be able to show up to the rink at five o’clock and suit up at seven. So it’s touch and go all day. They’re trying to do all sorts of things. Get him every resource they possibly can.”
With the help of Capitals staff, Oshie was able to take the ice, becoming the 390th skater in NHL history and the 62nd U.S.-born skater to play in 1,000 games.
The Capitals won 2-1, getting goals from Tom Wilson and Alex Ovechkin, and playing tremendous close-out defense in the third period.
After the game, the team honored Oshie for his accomplishment.
“I remember being outside that locker room,” Monumental Sports Network’s Al Koken said to Carbery. “And I don’t think I heard a louder celebration for him from his teammates. Because they knew what it meant for him to get to a thousand and how he had to get through.”
The team blasted John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” — Oshie’s goal song at Capital One Arena since the 2019-20 season. Spencer Carbery also made a post-game speech, giving Oshie his milestone game puck.
“It just speaks to his teammates and him suiting up that night,” Carbery said. “And I’ll never forget that game, being in Vancouver, us winning that game, and the fashion that we wanted. And it was a huge game for our team last year. To get that win and Osh to play his thousandth game. That was a massive game. I’ll never forget that game.”
Oshie told Koken then, “It’s been a tough road, especially these last 150 or so. There was a moment this year where we thought maybe I wasn’t going to be able to get there. It’s been a huge support system for me to get to 1,000. I love those guys, everyone so much, and appreciate them wanting this for me.
“It’s one thing for a guy to want to get to 1,000 games by himself, but I had teammates telling me they were going to strap me to their backs and throw a jersey on me if it came down to the last game of the year. That’s pretty special that we have that type of character in our room.”
Oshie would only play 10 more regular-season games and four more in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs before his career ended on long-term injured reserve.
“When you play that hard for that many years, for that many games, it’s just impressive, and you can see why his body eventually breaks down,” Carbery said. “Because just physics tell you that when you play that hard, when you’re going into bodies like that, it’s going to take a toll on you.”
Carbery added, “All the things, the skill and that, but [TJ] was such a physical player. For a guy his size, he would see someone coming across the middle and he would torpedo his body into a 200-pound player and have no problem with it. No let-up. No nervousness. Just right through.”
Who Oshie was as a player on the ice and a person in the locker room is what Carbery thinks helped make the Capitals such a juggernaut for so many years, eventually allowing them to lift their first Stanley Cup in 2018.
“It’s what has made this group so successful,” Carbery said. “For so many years, the talent, the skill, the competitiveness, the intelligence. That stuff’s really, really important. But you have a leadership group and he’s right there at the forefront with John (Carlson), with O (Alex Ovechkin), with Backy (Nicklas Backstrom), with Willie (Tom Wilson), is these are glue guys. These are guys that drag their teammates into the fight. When things aren’t going well, the coach can sit there and talk all he wants, and I can tell certain things and get on them. But then they need to go echo that. And they were always so brilliant at that. The last two years being around him and learning about him, and how he would communicate with his teammates, and how he would send a message from a coach through the room.
“I learned a lot from TJ Oshie over the last couple years and even coaching for 50 games or however many he played,” he concluded. “I’ll take a lot from our relationship and learned from him as a player.”
