T.J. Oshie

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

19 goals and 16 assists in 58 games — 35 points — at 16:43 a night. Minus-18, 126 shots at 15.1 per cent, nine on the power play, 59 penalty minutes.

Fifty-eight games, which is the third consecutive season he has failed to reach sixty.

46.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 23rd percentile, across 734 minutes, with his ice at 29-31 against an expectation of 28.39-32.67.

He started 52.3 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 60th percentile.

Nineteen goals in fifty-eight games at thirty-six is a twenty-seven-goal pace and a genuinely good season inside a bad one.

The Finesse Game

126 shots at a median of 19 feet, with 60 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 9 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside twenty feet: 69 shots on goal and 15 goals — 21.74 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 37 shots and five goals, 13.51 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 17 shots and none.

Above the positional rate from both bands that matter, on a hundred and six shots on goal, and a career 14.7 per cent across 958 games and 1,969 shots underneath it. That is a genuinely high career rate held over fifteen seasons.

187 tracked attempts, 38 of them tip-ins — a 20.3 per cent share, one of the highest in this chapter — and 19 slap. 89.8 mph at the 42nd percentile.

290 goals and 380 assists in 958 career games.

He plays in the paint on the power play and he gets his stick on everything, which the nine power-play goals and the tip-in share record between them.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 187 pounds, with 59 penalty minutes in 58 games and 497 in 958 career games.

Top speed 22.7 mph at the 74th percentile, 0.9 bursts above twenty a game at the 48th, 2.57 miles a game at the 50th. Ordinary in every direction at thirty-six, which is better than it sounds.

He is punishing for 187 pounds and takes far more than he gives, and the injury record is the price of fifteen years of it.

He is an agitator and the 59 penalty minutes in 58 games are not accidents.

The body has failed him repeatedly, and he has played more than sixty games once since 2018-19.

The Intangibles

Twenty-fourth overall in 2005, fifteen seasons, 958 games, 670 points across St. Louis and Washington, and a Stanley Cup.

290 goals and 380 assists at a career 14.7 per cent, and a plus-93.

He is thirty-six, on a long contract, on a club that has just missed the playoffs.

The player is still good and the availability is not. Fifty-eight games, forty-four, fifty-three: three seasons of a man producing at a first-line rate for two-thirds of a year, and a club that has to plan for the other third.