Over the past week, multiple Capitals players referred to the team as a family. It’s now even more evident.
After their win over the New York Rangers on Wednesday night, the Capitals changed their locker room victory song to John Denver’s “Country Roads”, TJ Oshie’s goal song. Oshie scored a hat trick in the first game back since his father passed away.
According to @VogsCaps postgame recap, #ALLCAPS ditched their usual team victory song (Opus – Live is Life) Wednesday night in New York
Instead, they played John Denver’s ‘Counrty Roads’ (T.J. Oshie’s goal song) after Oshie’s hat-trick in his first game after his dad passed away
— Ben Raby (@BenRaby31) May 7, 2021
The Capitals’ 2021 victory song is typically “Live is Life” by Opus. The song, originally released in 1984, went viral last summer in a video celebrating the life of former Argentinian soccer player Diego Maradona.
But, on Wednesday it was temporarily replaced with the classic “Country Roads”. Oshie has used it as his goal song at Capital One Arena since the beginning of the 2019-2020 season.
“There’s different ways to pick a goal song,” Oshie told the Washington Post’s Samantha Pell in 2019 about picking his goal song. It is either “something that is important to you and gets you going or gets the crowd going, so I figured the best part of playing in front of our fans is them getting involved, and I figured everyone, or at least most everyone, knows at least the chorus of ‘Country Roads.’”
The Capitals playing Oshie’s song as the team entered the locker room after a feisty, turned emotional game on Wednesday shows just how much they care about Oshie.
“He is one of the best people in the world that I have met,” Wilson said of Oshie on Friday. “He is an amazing person and an amazing teammate. We just wanted to be there for him and he stepped up and was the leader he was.”
After the game on Wednesday, John Carlson referred to Oshie as the Capitals’ heartbeat.
“He’s our rock. He’s our heartbeat guy,” John Carlson said to NBCSN. “He’s the heartbeat of our team. There was definitely some high emotions for guys that were just proud of him for going out and making Coach proud.”
Nicklas Backstrom, who gave Oshie a hug on the bench as the buzzer rang, referred to him as the strongest person he knows.
“We showed we’re a family and we’re in this together,” Backstrom added. “His loss is everyone’s loss so we feel for him.”
Headline image: Cara Bahniuk
