The two-time Presidents’ Trophy winners have an embarrassment of riches, several of whom are about to get embarrassingly rich.
Ka-ching!
Think about the types of players GMs clamour to sign on July 1, when the starter’s pistol sounds the beginning of unrestricted free agency. Washington dresses the best man available at four of those roles.
The responsible, defend-the-house blue-liner in his prime (Karl Alzner). The cagey, affable, bejeweled veteran who can play up and down your top nine and always comes up clutch when the flowers bloom (Justin Williams, a.k.a. Mr Game 7). The puck-moving defenceman who can quarterback a power-play (Kevin Shattenkirk).
And the top-line scoring winger.
T.J. Oshie fits that bill better than any forward on an expiring contract, better than any right wing to play opposite Alex Ovechkin on the Nicklas Backstrom line. When Oshie was acquired from the St. Louis Blues in 2015 (for Troy Brouwer, Pheonix Copley and a third-round pick), the Capitals added balance to attack weight toward (and on) the face of the franchise.
Look at this year’s numbers: Sandwiched between a pair of elite finishers, Backstrom registered the second-most assists (63) and fourth-most points (86) league-wide. Ovie and Oshie scored precisely 33 goals each.
“Ka-ching!” Ovechkin said on the eve of Oshie’s 30th. “It’s huge, especially his last year of the deal.”
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The thing about Oshie’s 33? It was more impressive and came during harder minutes than Ovechkin’s.
Not only did Oshie score seven more than his club co-leader at even-strength, he added three points while killing a minute of penalties every night. An energy guy with hands, a skill guy with grit, Oshie can comfortably slot anywhere in your lineup, plus contribute to both special teams.
And then there’s this: No hockey player is more accurate with his shot in 2016-17 than Oshie. Not even close.
Oshie scored on an incredible 23.1 per cent of his 143 shots on goal. The NHL’s next most efficient sniper (more than 20 shots on net) was Chicago’s Artem Anisimov at 21 per cent. (Ovechkin fired at a 10.5 per cent success rate.)
Don’t dare suggest to Oshie that his career year — he hit personal best in goals and plus/minus (plus-28) despite missing 14 games — has anything to do with playing for his next job.
“I’ve never been to free agency. Every year to me is the most I’ve wanted to win the Stanley Cup. Yeah, I realize this team isn’t going to be the same next year—obviously. But I don’t want to win any more this year than I did last year. It’s your dream. It’s your goal since you were a kid, and free agency isn’t going to change that,” Oshie says.
“We had a good group of guys in St. Louis. The difference here is, now I’ve got two kids and a wife. We have a very family-oriented team, which makes everything really easy and makes it a good fit for me and my family.”
A raise from his current $4.5-million salary is inevitable, but the winger will consider the best situation for his wife, Lauren, and their two young girls, Lyla and Leni, when weighing his end-of-year options.
As the Capitals try to ignore a franchise history soured with playoff misery and prepare for their first-round series against Toronto, Oshie sees a difference between the ’17 Caps and the ’16 group that won the regular season but was ousted by their nemeses, the Pittsburgh Penguins, in Round 2.
“This year we’re more aware of what we have to do to win games,” Oshie says. “Last year, especially around this time, we were just winning games. It was almost…”
Easy?
“Easy in the sense we were winning when maybe we shouldn’t have. Hard in the sense that we weren’t playing our game. We were finding power plays or Holts was winning us games or O would have a hat trick. It wasn’t that we played a full team game and we ran teams out of buildings.”
Featuring three of the top four teams in the league, the Metropolitan Division was a beast this season, yet the Capitals emerged atop the heap. By distancing themselves from the Blue Jackets and Penguins down the stretch, Washington was forced to dial it in earlier this spring and got rewarded with home ice for months and an inexperienced wild-card opponent.
“Sometimes you need those reminders of hard games: That’s what it’s going to take,” Oshie says. “That’s what we need to do. Last year we didn’t have many of those because we were just winning off timely goals.”
The only downside of drawing the Maple Leafs in Round 1? They’re not the Penguins.
“I’d relish the opportunity to send them home early,” Oshie says of Pittsburgh.
That brand of want is emblematic of Oshie’s attitude. Always one of the last Capitals to leave after warm-ups, he charges off the ice and down the corridor to the dressing room like a freed bull. Hilariously, during one of his hallway bolts this season, he nearly trampled his head coach:
While Mike Babcock’s Leafs will embrace the underdog card, Trotz — whom Don Cherry labeled “the most nervous guy in the world” — will be doing everything in his power to keep his troops focused on their next shift as opposed to the seismic shift from post-season choker to Cup hoister.
The minds behind the Capitals’ strategy delved into a heavy pre-scout* of the Leafs well in advance of Toronto clinching a playoff berth, and Shattenkirk says the Caps treated last Tuesday’s decisive 4-1 victory at the Air Canada Centre as Round 1 mood-setter.
“We wanted to establish our game, our physicality. It started with the first shift. O goes out there and lays a big hit [on Nazem Kadri]. That set the tone for us. That really sparked us, forced us to play the right way. We were able to really limit their transition game, which is where they’re really dangerous. In the D zone, we were strong around our net. They like to throw a lot of pucks to the net and try to win battles there. We did a good job negating that,” Shattenkirk said.
“That’s something we never lost sight of—that we could see these guys. More than that, we respect these guys and the skill they have on the ice. We know Babcock’s going to coach them well and play the right way.”
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Ditto Trotz, who insists the Capitals still have another level of execution to hit after their 118-point campaign. the coach won’t need to say much to Oshie, however. Just stay out of his way.
“I’ve been fortunate. Last four years I’ve had four good teams with a real good chance to make a run,” says Oshie.
This is his best shot at becoming known for something else than that guy who kept scoring all those shootout goals in Sochi.
“Falling short is not fun. I realize you only get so many opportunities. I want to take advantage of it.”
*This does not include Oshie. When asked specifically about Auston Matthews‘ game, for example, Oshie said the teenager looks great on highlights but, honestly, hasn’t seen many full shifts. “I’m not much of a hockey nerd,” said the father of two.
