tj oshie, the former NHL winger turned analyst, told The Pat McAfee Show on Monday that the Boston Bruins needed to respond with physicality after a 6-1 loss to the Buffalo Sabres left Boston trailing the series 3-1.
Oshie — a 16-season veteran who played 106 playoff games, won the Stanley Cup with the Capitals in 2018 and retired in 2024 — said bluntly that a team embarrassed in a game should “start creating havoc.” “You would have liked to maybe see Boston last night – I don’t even care what happens here, you’re out of the game, just start creating havoc,” he said on the program.
He repeated the point in starker terms: “This is still hockey here. Just drop the gloves. Start running guys over. Whatever it is. I don’t care what it is. That’s what you’d want to see, right?” Oshie added that Boston could use a dash of reckless edge: “You want to get a little reckless, get a little Tom Wilson on your squad or something like that.”
Oshie framed the comments as a playoff mentality forged across a long career: “You have to make an impact every time you’re on the ice,” he said. “As a forward, for me, I wanted whatever defenseman I’m going to go against to be petrified that the second he touches the puck, I’m coming full speed and I don’t care what happens.” He acknowledged the accepted odds of that approach: “Maybe we both get hurt, it doesn’t matter, but that’s kinda the mentality you have to have in a playoff series, right?”
Oshie also warned that Buffalo should not be allowed to settle into easy play. “Boston can get into this if Buffalo sits back and thinks it’s just going to be a cakewalk, they’re just going to win the series 4-1, and it’s going to be easy,” he said. “They’ll be in for a little bit of a surprise.”
The comments landed against a volatile finish to Sunday’s Game 4. With 3:17 left in regulation, Nikita Zadorov cross-checked Rasmus Dahlin and was assessed a five-minute major and a 10-minute misconduct, a sequence that ended with a melee on the ice. The NHL’s Department of Player Safety fined Zadorov $5,000, the maximum allowable under the collective bargaining agreement.
Oshie invoked Tom Wilson as a model for how a single player’s chaos can swing playoff matchups — a nod to Washington’s history of benefiting from Wilson’s physical play in multiple postseason series. The show’s discussion recalled specific incidents last year in which Wilson exchanged words with Arber Xhekaj before a Game 3 against Montreal, got into a bench brawl with Josh Anderson at the end of the second period in that game, and delivered a hit on Alexandre Carrier in Game 4.
The immediate consequence is plain: Boston returns to Buffalo on Tuesday night with the Sabres able to eliminate the Bruins with a win on home ice. Oshie’s prescription is simple and provocative — force momentum through physicality — but it collides with the league’s disciplinary rules and recent enforcement. That collision is the tension teams must weigh: do you answer a blowout with increased aggression and risk penalties and fines, or try to claw back control within the constraints the league will police?
For now, the question falls to the Bruins’ bench. Oshie has laid out one playbook drawn from 16 seasons and 106 playoff games; whether Boston follows it, or chooses a less visceral route to extend the series, will decide whether Tuesday is an elimination night or the start of a comeback.
