MOUNTLAKE TERRACE – Home has already been many places for T.J. Oshie, who grew up in Everett, briefly attended high school in Stanwood, graduated from high school in Warroad, Minn., and lives today in Grand Forks, N.D., where he attends the University of North Dakota.
And if the next few years unfold as expected, he will soon have another home in the National Hockey League.
The 20-year-old Oshie, who attended Everett’s Lowell Elementary School and Evergreen Middle School as a boy, is one of the top young players in American hockey. He was a first-round draft pick by the NHL’s St. Louis Blues in 2005, the year he graduated from high school, and he has spent the past two seasons as one of the best players on one of the best teams in the collegiate game.
A move to professional hockey now seems a matter of when, not if.
“I’m really going year by year right now,” said Oshie, who visited family and friends last week while working at a youth hockey camp at the Olympic View Ice Arena in Mountlake Terrace. “At the end of last year, I definitely wanted to stay (in college). At the end of this year, it was kind of 50-50 for a little bit. But I talked to some of my (North Dakota) teammates and we kind of made a pact with each other, the guys who had a possibility of leaving, that we all wanted to come back and try to get (an NCAA) championship.
“But as a kid you’re always thinking, ‘I want to play in the NHL.’ That’s kind of your dream, your No. 1 goal,” he said.
Oshie got started in hockey as a preschooler with the Seattle Junior Hockey Association. He continued to play with the SJHA through grade school, middle school and into high school, but it became evident that he needed to play more hockey and against better players if he intended to excel.
As it turned out, the Oshie family has relatives in Warroad, which is a small community with a great hockey tradition in northern Minnesota. Warroad, on the northern border of Minnesota along the shores of Lake of the Woods, was the home of Bill and Roger Christian, stars of the 1960 U.S. Olympic hockey team, which won the gold medal in Squaw Valley, Calif., and Bill’s son Dave Christian, who was part of the U.S. team that did the same in Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980.
Another Warroad native is Henry Boucha, who played for the U.S. in the 1972 Olympics and then in the NHL from 1972-1977. He also happens to be Oshie’s older cousin (another older cousin, Gary Sargent, played in the NHL from 1975-1983), and Boucha became Oshie’s host upon his move to Warroad as a high school sophomore.
Oshie was initially an average prep player, largely because his Minnesota peers had spent years playing the game virtually every day. He needed time to catch up, but through hard work his talent began to emerge. In his senior season Oshie was a first-team All-State selection and the runner-up for Minnesota’s Mr. Hockey award, given each year to the best high school player in the state.
“It wasn’t like the first time he stepped on the ice we were saying, ‘Wow, we’ve got a star here,’” said Cary Eades, Oshie’s high school coach at Warroad and today the associate head coach at North Dakota. “But with added ice time and with his work ethic, all of a sudden he just took off.
“He was a rink rat then and he’s a rink rat today,” Eades said. “He’s constantly working on his skills. There are two rinks in Warroad, and he was getting daily ice with the high school team, and then he did additional (workouts) on his own. Once a day was not enough for him.”
At North Dakota, Oshie joined a program that is a longtime national power. The Fighting Sioux have won seven NCAA titles (Eades was on the 1979-80 championship team) and have sent dozens of players on to pro hockey. Perhaps the school’s most distinguished hockey alum is Ed Belfour, who was one of the NHL’s top goaltenders through the 1990s and into this decade. Dave Christian, who followed his 1980 gold medal with a long NHL career, is another UND grad.
The team plays at Ralph Engelstad Arena, which seats 11,406 for hockey. Those seats are often filled for home games with fans that are knowledgeable and passionate about the game.
The atmosphere “is really fun,” Oshie said. “It’s actually pretty surreal your first few games. You don’t really get used to it until after Christmas your freshman year.”
The hockey is pretty good, too, with Oshie playing on a first line that includes Jonathan Toews, who was a first-round pick by the Chicago Blackhawks and the NHL’s No. 3 selection overall in 2006, and Ryan Duncan, who won the 2007 Hobey Baker Award, which is the hockey equivalent of football’s Heisman Trophy.
Oshie is non-committal about his plans after next season. He could return to North Dakota for his senior year, but he also could be tempted to jump to the NHL. In fact, he attended a Blues prospects camp earlier this summer and made a strong impression on team officials, including club president John Davidson, the former TV analyst.
Eades, likewise, has no doubts about Oshie’s future in hockey.
“I definitely see an NHL-level hockey player,” he said. “I’ve been here (at UND) for some 20 some years, off and on (as a player and two stints as a coach), and there have been more talented players than him who have not had long NHL careers and there have been less talented players who had 15-20 year careers. So it’s really hard to guarantee that a person will have success at that level.
“But it just goes back to his work ethic and his love for the game,” Eades said. “I just don’t think he’s going to be denied. He’s had two tremendous years for us, and we’re hoping for a third, and then more than likely it will be on to the NHL.
“Right now,” he added, “the sky’s the limit for him.”
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