Former Washington Capitals forward\u00a0TJ Oshie might be best known for his heroics at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, leading Team USA over Russia with four goals in the shootout. But the man himself hadn\u2019t rewatched the entire game until just this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d just seen the clips of the goals,\u201d Oshie revealed on an episode of the \u201cNHL Unscripted\u201d podcast released Aug. 7<\/a>. \u201cSo me and my daughter, my nine-year-old, she\u2019s a little athlete in the family and she wanted to watch the game. And so that\u2019s the first time I\u2019d ever watched the game was a couple months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Oshie didn\u2019t feel the need to re-live one of his glory days but admitted it\u2019s certainly one he can recall without video assistance.<\/p>\n \u201cI can pretty much remember everything that happened. I\u2019m usually not like that with games and sports,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s only like a few moments where like off the top of my head I can remember, unless I like watch it and then, you know, the feelings come back or the emotions or whatever it is. But that one I can just because it blew up so big. At the time I wasn\u2019t thinking much about it. You know, you\u2019re just playing and finish and you look at the coach to see if he wants you to go again.\u201d<\/p>\n Team USA head coach Dan Bylsma did, indeed, want Oshie to go again \u2013 five times total, in fact. But after watching his 28-year-old self for the first time in 11 years, Oshie didn\u2019t hold back on the assessment of his performance during the four periods prior to the shootout.<\/p>\n \u201cI definitely looked terrible in the game, I thought for sure,\u201d he joked. \u201cBut yeah, it was obviously a special moment in my career. I still get all the feels.\u201d<\/p>\n Oshie didn\u2019t provide any specific critiques of his own game but rather he enjoyed being in awe of some of his teammates\u2019 talent, specifically his former Capitals teammate Brooks Orpik.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know what I noticed is some of the older guys that like are probably almost all now retired from the 2014 Olympics. You look at those guys and I remember them based on like the last year or two of their career and you see them out there and you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh my God.\u2019 Like I saw, obviously I\u2019m good buddies with Orpik. I\u2019m like, \u2018Holy, Orpy\u2019s flying out there,’\u201d Oshie described. \u201cBecause like at the end you have knee problems, back problems, you\u2019re an NHL player, but you\u2019re getting through some things to get out there and stay on the ice, you know. And I just remember some guys in the game, I was like, \u2018God, they are, those guys are good.\u2019 Like they were really good.\u201d<\/p>\n Oshie spent seven seasons with the St. Louis Blues and the remaining nine years of his career with the Caps after being traded in 2015. He lifted the Stanley Cup in 2018 and assisted on 48 of Alex Ovechkin\u2019s NHL record 897 career goals<\/a>. Despite all that, the Warroad, Minnesota-native says outside of those two cities hockey fans who recognize him want to talk about Sochi.<\/p>\n \u201cIt actually depends on where I\u2019m at. So, if I\u2019m in DC, it\u2019s all Caps stuff. You know, St. Louis, I don\u2019t get back there very much, but that\u2019s mostly about St. Louis stuff. Minnesota, not much,\u201d he explained. \u201cAny other place besides those three places, it\u2019s all shootout. In Minnesota, they talk about high school, they talk about playing [at] North Dakota. [In] DC, they talk about the Cup, well, you talk about Ovi, mostly. And then, in St. Louis, they talk about the old days and whatever, you know, my younger years. But yeah, anywhere outside of those places, if I\u2019m walking around like in New York, say, and a hockey fan notices me for some reason, it\u2019s going to be about the shootout 100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of those interactions, he recalled, were not about his strategy to beat Russian goalie Sergei Bobrovsky but, instead reminiscing in the early morning elations at bars, showing the game live despite the seven-hour time difference.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s great is, it\u2019s usually, \u2018Man, I\u2019ve never been to a bar at 6 am.\u2019 And they\u2019re like, \u2018That was the best, like, most fun time at a bar,’\u201d Oshie recounted. \u201cThat\u2019s usually what they say, they\u2019re like, \u2018Yeah, I [had] my kid with me. We were buzzing.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018That\u2019s actually pretty cool.\u2019 Maybe a reason why it stands out so much.\u201d<\/p>\n His prowess from that moment onward was impressive enough that back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Matthew Tkachuk said in July that he\u2019d pick Oshie over Wayne Gretzky in a do-or-die shootout<\/a>. It\u2019s not a bad pick considering Oshie is the fourth-best player in league history when it comes to converting in the shootout<\/a> (47.1 percent).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Washington Capitals forward\u00a0TJ Oshie might be best known for his heroics at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-101516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}