Story by
Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
T.J. Oshie evolving from Olympic hero to broadcast booth
- Story byPioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
- T.J. Oshie evolving from Olympic hero to broadcast booth
When international hockey games go to a shootout, the same player is allowed to shoot again and again if that is what the coach prefers. That is a rule that forward Warroad High School star T.J. Oshie illustrated to the world a dozen years ago at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.
With the Americans and Russians tied after overtime, the game went to a shootout, and Oshie served his country in one of the more memorable moments in Olympic hockey history. American coach Dan Bylsma sent Oshie out to face Russian goalie Sergei Bobrovsky six times, including the last five Team USA attempts in a row.
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Oshie scored on four of them, ultimately winning the game.
Known for a dizzying array of shootout moves, Oshie's go-to on that day was to aim for the gap between Bobrovsky's knees, known in hockey parlance as the 5-hole.
Looking back, as he is asked to do every four years when the Winter Olympics come around, Oshie says his best memories from 2014 come from finally getting to play with all of the other American stars that he was usually tasked with stopping when he played against them early in his NHL career for the St. Louis Blues .
"It was almost a sense of relief, finally getting to bond with the American guys," said Oshie, now 39 and living in the Minneapolis suburbs with his wife Lauren and their four children. "I played with them briefly in World Juniors but even then, I was a fourth line guy and a lot of the guys on our team were older."
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The American team returned home from Sochi without a medal, falling to Canada in the semifinals and losing bronze to the Finns, but Oshie's status as a Team USA legend was cemented. He went on to win the Stanley Cup with the Washington Capitals in 2018, and officially retired from the NHL last summer after recurring back problems kept hime on long term injured reserve for all of the 2024-25 season.
After three seasons of college hockey at North Dakota, Oshie played more than 1,000 games for the Blues and Capitals in addition to his work with USA Hockey. Of the players with 100 or more career shootout attempts, Oshie's 47.1% scoring rate is best in NHL history.
Hockey homecoming
With family in Minnesota , the Oshies made the tough decision to sell their home in northern Virginia and permanently relocate to the Twin Cities last summer. Thus far, they are loving the move — winter weather and all.
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"In D.C., you don't have time to drop someone off and go home and then get back, so a lot of our afternoons were spent sitting at practices with other parents," he said. "Here, it's so easy to get around. I know people complain about Minnesota traffic, but it's actually unbelievable. And here nobody watches practice, so I don't know what to do with my time now."
Oshie's free time has been snapped up quickly. He has transitioned mostly seamlessly from the players' bench to a spot between the benches, wearing a tie and a headset. Originally he was just going to work for ESPN on occasion, but his plate has been filled by Monumental Sports, the regional network that televises Capitals games, and NBC, which has made Oshie a part of its Olympic hockey broadcast team (he works remotely from a studio in on the East Coast).
Before that, Oshie was seen, briefly, in a Super Bowl commercial for Michelob ULTRA, appearing as a ski race spectator alongside Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim and renowned actor Kurt Russell, well-known for his portrayal of Herb Brooks in the 2004 movie, "Miracle."
Oshie is the founder of Warroad Hockey Company, which has quickly become one of the NHL's top suppliers of undergarments and outerwear. The company is named after the town where Oshie's ancestors were hockey stars in the 1940s, and where he moved following his freshman year of high school and won state high school titles in 2003 and 2005.
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New kind of pregame prep
For Oshie, the preparation and production work that goes into a hockey broadcast has been an eye opener. He credited well-known broadcasters such as Steve Levy and John Buccigross for their help and guidance in this new world.
"I've had a lot of great people around me, just like in hockey, both at ESPN and at Monumental," Oshie said. "Along with talent coaches and producers and coordinating producers, I'm super fortunate and super lucky that all these people helped me along the way to try to be competitive at being on TV. I want to be the best I can be and give the fans the best insight I can."
He admits to accentuating the positive, more apt to point out a good play made by an offensive player to steal the point than to highlight a defensive player's error in coughing it up. For new co-workers like Levy, who has been with ESPN more than three decades, the new guy has been a welcomed addition to the broadcast team.
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"He's got an infectious personality and a smile that sort of lights up on TV," Levy said. "The first night we had him in studio we had a triple-header. We were in a break and he looks over and was all bewildered, and a mess. He said, 'I've never watched this much hockey in my life.' And that was the first night. Welcome to the grind."
Bobrovsky has backstopped the last two Stanley Cup titles won by the Florida Panthers , and all these years later, Oshie admits that the two have never actually spoken. But they did have one memorable on-ice reunion in March 2017 when Oshie's Capitals hosted Bobrovsky's Columbus Blue Jackets . With the game tied after overtime, Oshie took the ice to face Bobrovsky with a chance to win the game.
"I honestly feel a little bad about it … but I scored 5-hole on him again," Oshie said. "It was a little rude. I could've done something else, but I said, 'I'm just going to try it again. If he saves it, good for him.' It had worked before, and I did score 5-hole on him after the Olympics."
In the Olympics, in the NHL, with his family and now in the broadcast booth, Oshie continues to get the job done.
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