Oshie emotional after winning Stanley Cup with Capitals

LAS VEGAS --T.J. Oshie had to pause. The tears would not stop coming. They filled his eyes and threatened to drip down a face that was covered in a mix of dried sweat and salt water, remnants of previous interviews and previous tears. He plucked a corner of the Stanley Cup champion towel he wore around his neck and dabbed his eyes. He apologized.
His voice was strained, from the emotion, from the cheering, from the weight of everything that had happened and was still happening.

"This win - sorry - it's got to be for my family," Oshie said, breaking down. "For my two little girls. I got my name on something else, so they'll know that Dad played hockey when they grow up. For my Dad, who has Alzheimer's. His memory's slipping a little these days. I think this is one memory that I don't think he's going to forget."
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Oshie's father Tim had arrived in Las Vegas from Seattle that afternoon, on the hope and the faith that the Washington Capitals, up 3-1 in the best-of-7 Stanley Cup Final, would close out the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena in Game 5. They did, the 4-3 win giving the Stanley Cup to the Capitals for the first time in their 43-season history, and Oshie the chance to celebrate with his father.
"What a great human being. What a great man. What a great father," Oshie said. "Some things slip his memory these days. But this one, I think this one's going to be seared in there. I don't think any disease is going to take this one away from him.
"He knows [what's going on]. He's going to take a long drink out of that big thing over there."
Oshie searched the ice with his eyes as he patiently answered questions, as he bared his soul. He had yet to find his family, his two daughters, Lyla and Leni, his wife Lauren, and his father. He desperately wanted to locate them.
Oshie had been trying to get Tim, who is in his mid-50s, to Capitals games all throughout the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but hadn't been able to do so with the limitations the disease has laid on his father. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2012, according to a story on ESPN.com from 2014.

But in what Oshie called "a perfect storm," Tim was able to make the trip with Oshie's aunt and sister on Thursday.
So he was there, when the buzzer sounded and the players flooded the ice and the emotions spilled over. He was there in person, as witness, to a moment that Oshie had been waiting for his whole life, and which he had made happen as one of the catalysts on the Capitals.
Oshie, who was acquired by Washington in a trade with the St. Louis Blues in 2015, finished the Stanley Cup Playoffs fourth on the team with 21 points (eight goals, 13 assists), behind Evgeny Kuznetsov (32), Alex Ovechkin (27) and Nicklas Backstrom (23). He had helped lift his team, in the way he had been taught by Tim, especially in a Game 4 (6-2 win) in which he had a goal and two assists.
"What a positive guy," Oshie said. "All the obstacles he has to deal with on a day in, day out basis. He still stays positive. He tells me after every game how proud he is of me. A lot of the character I get, a lot of the stuff I try to bring to this team, I get from him."
Oshie finally located his father on the ice. The men embraced. Later, after more interviews and more tears and more words that could barely contain what he was feeling and experiencing, they made their way to the Stanley Cup itself. They gathered together, his family, and took a picture with the Cup in front of them.

Then his wife and daughters drifted away. Tim and T.J. were left. They lifted the Cup together, their hands on either side, and then they were carrying it, each man supporting the other, each helping with a burden that was both heavy and light as air.
As he walked away, Tim's eyes were shining, just like his son's. Shouts of "Coach," the name T.J. calls his dad, came from the ice and from the stands, from those who knew the story and those who perhaps did not.
T.J.'s eyes were full, too.
"This is just the most amazing feeling," he said. "I've been working for this for about 27 years. To finally do it, I don't know. It's a dream come true."
It all washed over him as he sat on the bench, as he waited for the clock to tick down. The tears were flowing. There was blood on his left sleeve.

This was all he had worked for. All he had wanted. All he had hoped to share with his family. It was for his father with Alzheimer's. For his daughter Lyla, who was born with a birth defect, gastroschisis, in which her intestines were on the outside of her body. For Leni and Lauren. For his brother and his father-in-law, both of whose birthdays fell on Thursday. For his sister and his aunt. For his teammates.
For himself.
"There's been three amazing days in my life: That was my wedding day and the birth of my two little girls," Oshie said. "I've got a No. 4 now."