After missing the last three weeks due to an undisclosed injury, Washington Capitals forward T.J. Oshie will make his return to the Capitals lineup on Thursday, when they play host to the Seattle Kraken. Oshie was a late scratch on Dec. 17, when the Caps were in Raleigh to take on the Carolina Hurricanes. According to Oshie on Wednesday, the injury occurred during warmups.
The Capitals said that it was a lower-body injury, and two days later he was placed on injured-reserve. Then on Jan. 5, Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery said that he went home to Minnesota to receive treatment, but this time for an upper-body injury.
“I’m a very present person. And so when injuries or losses or maybe some bad play happens, you wake up the next day and go back to work,” Oshie said following Wednesday’s practice. “So you’d like to not have those bad things happen, but they’re kind of inevitable at some point.”
Health has been an issue throughout Oshie’s tenure in Washington. This past offseason, he underwent a minor procedure to solve lingering back issues that he played through last year and said that he felt like his old self. However, the 37-year-old struggled mightily and went goalless for the first 19 games of the season.
Once he scored his first goal against the Buffalo Sabres, he suffered a concussion against the Edmonton Oilers and missed the next six games. Then six games later the Carolina injury occurred.
“The timing of these kinds of a couple of injuries I’ve had has been kind of rough with the Christmas break getting in the way and then with the concussion, the guys being out west, so I didn’t really have anyone to skate with so it’s nice to be back,” Oshie said.
Oshie’s return could not have come at a better time. Washington has gone on a bit of a cold streak as of late, winning just two of its last eight contests, and the two games that the Caps won, against the Pittsburgh Penguins and Los Angeles Kings respectively, were each one-goal contests and came down to the final seconds of regulation.
The veteran winger brings a calming, yet powerful voice to the locker room in those tight situations.
“His presence, communication, leadership, locker room, there’s a ton of things that he brings on the bench that I notice… He does a lot of things with his skill set, his ability to make plays in small tight areas, winning loose pucks, his heaviness, forecheck pressure, winning down-low situations in the offensive zone,” Carbery said. “But I also think he gives us a veteran player that especially in moments that get a little bit dicey, and you’ve lost momentum, or you need to shift to turn momentum, he knows how to handle that.”
The Caps got off to a terrible start to the season and nobody, including Oshie, was playing quality hockey. But around late October and all the way through November, the Capitals started to show their true character and found ways to win against some of the best teams in the league. But there is still work to be done heading down the stretch.
“There’s big talk in the beginning of the year about kind of the identity of our team. And I think we just haven’t seen it consistently. But it is building, and you can see it when we are playing at our best,” Oshie said. “We do have a lot of maturity on the team, but we do got a lot of young guys with a lot of experience as well. So, we’re navigating through those different experiences and really finding our footing here. It’s gonna be a big, big month for us.”
Oshie will look to further strengthen Washington’s identity as the Caps look to claw their way back into playoff contention, starting with Thursday’s matchup against a Seattle team that has won its last six straight games.
By Jacob Cheris
