TJ Oshie was reunited with some of his childhood hockey memorabilia last year after enduring an uncomfortable situation with a storage unit flipper.<\/p>\n
Oshie shared the story while making an appearance on the \u201cNHL Unscripted with Virk and Demers\u201d podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n The former Capitals forward, who recently moved back to Minnesota<\/a> after retiring from the NHL in June, was asked if he found any memorabilia or items that brought back any good memories while packing. Oshie took his response in a different direction, opening up about a challenge his family had after his late father\u2019s plight with Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n TJ Oshie: I haven\u2019t dug too deep into the memorabilia stuff. Actually, last summer, which technically was right after I played my last game, I went through \u2014 my teammates, high school teammates up in Warroad, there was this big debacle. My dad had Alzheimer\u2019s, forgot a lot of things. He forgot that he had a storage unit up in northern Minnesota and just stopped paying for it. And, you know, \u2018Storage Wars,\u2019 someone got it.<\/p>\n They tried to ask me to buy it back for, like, I think the number was 16 grand or something. I was like, \u2018Dude, it\u2019s just my childhood things.\u2019 There\u2019s no (value) \u2014 it\u2019s all high school and before, so not World Juniors, none of that stuff, right? And he wouldn\u2019t give it back, wouldn\u2019t give it back. And finally, I was like, \u2018Alright, just keep it. Like, peace off and sell it if you want.\u2019<\/p>\n Apparently, he couldn\u2019t sell it because it was literally my kid (stuff), you know, your medals playing, like, Burnaby 8 Rinks, the SuperSeries. That\u2019s all it was. It was stuff like that. My team pictures.<\/p>\n Anyway, so I went up for [the Warroad] golf tournament last year and they brought me down to my buddy\u2019s basement and surprised me. Some Warroad guy was driving through, a guy told him about it, and he was like, \u2018I\u2019m leaving with that stuff.\u2019 And he paid the guy \u2014 I can\u2019t remember what the amount was. Not 16 (grand), but I think he paid over $1,000. He\u2019s like, \u2018This is all I have here. I\u2019m leaving with TJ\u2019s stuff.\u2019 And he packed it all up and I walked downstairs and they had it out like a museum.<\/p>\n Like, my letterman jacket was in there. And then a bunch of my dad\u2019s childhood stuff, like his community college basketball things. And so that was kind of the big thing for me, is I got all that stuff. And last summer I went through it all and, you know, threw away some stuff that has no meaning, but it\u2019s cool to see all that stuff and a good surprise from my high school buddies.<\/p>\n Oshie\u2019s father, Tim, passed away on May 4, 2021, at the age of 56. Nicknamed \u201cCoach,\u201d the elder Oshie lived with early-onset Alzheimer\u2019s disease from at least 2012. Tim was influential in TJ becoming such a successful hockey player, moving his son to Warroad in 2002. Oshie would go on to star for Warroad High School\u2019s hockey team \u2014 his number 19 was retired in 2022<\/a> \u2014 and eventually went 24th overall to the St. Louis Blues in the 2005 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n Having a family member with Alzheimer\u2019s is a heartbreaking experience, as their memory and reasoning skills erode over time. With those circumstances in mind, one can only imagine how frustrating of an experience this was for Oshie having to deal with a flipper who was trying to make a quick buck.<\/p>\n The fact that one of TJ\u2019s friends managed to get the gear and reunite him with it is extraordinarily kind. Not only does it show how much respect TJ has garnered from those close to him, but also his father, who fought valiantly through a profoundly-challenging disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TJ Oshie was reunited with some of his childhood hockey memorabilia last year after enduring an uncomfortable situation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-83796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}