{"id":127969,"date":"2025-09-02T19:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T19:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/127969\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T19:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T19:49:07","slug":"tj-oshie-got-stem-cell-injections-in-his-back-to-try-and-resume-his-hockey-career-i-was-in-really-bad-shape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/127969\/","title":{"rendered":"TJ Oshie got stem-cell injections in his back to try and resume his hockey career: \u2018I was in really bad shape\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Washington Capitals forward\u00a0TJ Oshie retired from professional hockey in June<\/a> due to his ongoing struggle to recover from chronic back pain.<\/p>\n

The 2018 Stanley Cup champion missed the entire 2024-25 season on long-term injured reserve, but revealed in an episode of the \u201cSpittin\u2019 Chiclets Podcast\u201d released Tuesday<\/a> that he went to great lengths last year to try and return to the ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in really bad shape. I would have to flex my glutes and squeeze my abs just to get my baby out of her crib,\u201d Oshie said of his symptoms. \u201cSo I ended up getting stem cell injections in five discs in January, early January [2024]. And right away I was like\u2026 it was super painful. I was like, \u2018I went through all this and I don\u2019t feel better.\u2019 Six weeks came and [my doctor] was like, \u2018You can start training a little bit,\u2019 and I still didn\u2019t feel good. He was like, \u2018You know, since you\u2019re not playing and we\u2019re not super rushed,\u2019 he\u2019s like, \u2018Just give it 12 weeks.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019m not even kidding you. Like on the day of the 12-week mark, I was like, \u2018Oh my, I\u2019m moving.\u2019 And so I got into the gym and\u2026 I did a detox with [my wife] for a week\u2026 and a week in, I was like, \u2018All right, here we go.\u2019 I started training fairly hard. Not like right before training camp type hard, but decently hard, thinking that maybe there was a flicker of a chance. And there really wasn\u2019t enough time for me to give it a real go. But I just don\u2019t think there was a chance that I would be able to [play] the way I would wanna play the game. I just don\u2019t think the back would be able to sustain it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oshie never did touch the ice for the Capitals last season. He lamented the fact that he hasn\u2019t skated at all since the New York Rangers swept the team in Round 1 of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs, a series in which he recorded just a single point \u2014 an assist on a John Carlson first-period tally in Game 3.<\/p>\n

\u201c[I] wasn\u2019t in any position to go on the ice at all [last year],\u201d Oshie said.<\/p>\n

The 38-year-old father of four detailed the intense medical journey he embarked on as early as 2022 when his back issues first cropped up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess it would\u2019ve been like the end of the 2022 season. Definitely in the \u201923 season, where we had started having a lot of problems, and I did the MRIs, I did all the whatever needling, everything. I did everything,\u201d Oshie recounted. \u201cAnd I met with surgeons around the country that are like the big dogs, right? They do all the big athletes, and most of them all just said, \u2018Your discs don\u2019t look that bad. We could probably take a snapshot or MRI of like 20 other hockey players that play 15 years, and their backs are probably gonna look like this.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019re not sure, maybe just take a break,\u2019 and, \u2018If you stop playing, you\u2019ll be good.’\u201d<\/p>\n

After multiple trips back and forth to Minnesota for treatment \u2014 one of which Oshie revealed he needed his two daughters to travel with him \u201cso they could help me through the airport\u201d \u2014 he decided to consult other NHL players for alternative solutions. Vegas Golden Knights winger Mark Stone, who struggled with his own back injuries, suggested Oshie see his specialist in Denver, Colorado. That visit revealed the troubling source of Oshie\u2019s pain and struggles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had taken six months off at that point. I couldn\u2019t work out, I wasn\u2019t doing anything, and I still wasn\u2019t getting any better, and he figured out that I had tears in my discs, multiple tears all the way through the disc,\u201d Oshie detailed. \u201cSo he was like, \u2018Every time you twist, every time you compress, decompress, those tears are tearing a little bit.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Those tears, compounded with squeezed nerves in his discs, were causing his back to seize up and prevent him from any free range of movement. Oshie recalled the time he went down with a non-contact injury against the Tampa Bay Lightning in February during the 2023-24 season. He needed to be helped off the ice, but what happened the next morning in the team hotel gave him a scare.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy discs that are all bulging, there\u2019s not a lot of space for the nerves, and I would spasm in like four different spots. So you\u2019re just spasming against yourself,\u201d Oshie said. \u201cThat\u2019s why that clip of me, like on the ground, where we\u2019re in Tampa, [we] went to [Sunrise,] Florida, and the next morning it was, I think it was probably a full 45 minutes. I was stuck on the ground spasming, and I couldn\u2019t get to my phone, which was on the bed, and I couldn\u2019t reach the hotel phone. So, it took me 45 minutes to just slowly inch over, pull the phone down from the cord, and call security to call the team. Luckily, they caught \u2019em right before they went to practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oshie said he received stem cell treatment \u201cto fill in the tears\u201d shortly after that episode and in recent months has been doing \u201cgood enough to be a normal human being.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Washington Capitals forward\u00a0TJ Oshie retired from professional hockey in June due to his ongoing struggle to recover…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-127969","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\/127969","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=127969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}