While he\u2019s no longer an active player in the NHL, former Washington Capitals forward TJ Oshie has a near-constant, painful reminder of his hockey-playing days.<\/p>\n
In an interview with The Athletic\u2019s Jeremy Rutherford<\/a>, Oshie revealed that he\u2019s still dealing with lingering back injury issues despite not having played in an NHL game since April 28, 2024. The 2018 Stanley Cup champion was forced to retire due to the ailment<\/a> after his final contract with the Capitals expired this past summer.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a good stretch of health there for a while, but most people know I\u2019m pretty competitive, so I played in a pickup basketball game about a month ago, and my back has been on the fritz ever since then,\u201d Oshie told Rutherford<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s just something that I\u2019ll deal with. When you play the game a certain way, you\u2019re not going to get out of it feeling great.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if I could do it all over again, I would do it the exact same way because it\u2019s who I am. I wear it almost as a badge of honor because I played the game a certain way and tried to leave it all on the ice every night, and the back is a reminder of that.\u201d<\/p>\n After the end of the 2023-24 campaign, Oshie\u00a0stated that he would step away from hockey if he couldn\u2019t find \u201can answer and a fix\u201d to his recurring back problems<\/a>. He missed 92 games due to injury over the last three seasons that he played, suiting up in 154 of 246 possible games.<\/p>\n Oshie tried several methods during the latter stage of his career to stay on the ice, including having a double ablation procedure done to try to help relieve pain<\/a>. He also regularly flew to Minnesota or had his doctor, Dr. Kerry Johnson of\u00a0Johnson Spinal Care<\/a>, fly to DC for treatments.<\/p>\n The one-time 33-goal scorer made headlines after admitting that when his back flared up, and he couldn\u2019t play, \u201cI\u2019m usually literally on the floor peeing in water bottles. It sucks when that happens, and I can\u2019t pick up kids or do any of that until I go see Dr. Johnson up in Minnesota and he gets me all aligned, and then I seem to feel a lot better.\u201d<\/p>\n Oshie later spent the entire 2024-25 season on long-term injured reserve, retiring from hockey last June in a ceremony at the Washington Harbour<\/a>, where he once celebrated the Capitals\u2019 Stanley Cup victory by swimming in fountains. He has now transitioned to a hockey media career, serving as an official contributor and studio analyst on both Monumental Sports Network<\/a> and ESPN<\/a>.<\/p>\n The former St. Louis Blues winger recently worked a Blues game for ESPN, where he was positioned between the benches. His broadcast partner, John Buccigross, labeled Oshie \u201cstill in mourning\u201d over not being on the ice anymore, but praised his performance on the mic<\/a>.<\/p>\n Oshie was also hired by NBC to cover the 2026 Winter Olympics<\/a>. The Washington-born forward is an Olympic legend for Team USA after he went 4-for-6 in shootout attempts in a win over Russia at the 2014 Games in Sochi<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While he\u2019s no longer an active player in the NHL, former Washington Capitals forward TJ Oshie has a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-409497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409497","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=409497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}