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T. J. Oshie predicts Maple Leafs will bounce back from early season struggles

Originally posted on TheLeafsnation | By Dylan Nazareth | Last updated Dec 18, 2025 9:00 AM ET

The Toronto Maple Leafs are back on the road this week, set to face off against the Washington Capitals on Thursday.

Through 32 games this season, Toronto sits sixth in the Atlantic division, three points and five teams back from the second wild card spot in the East. Considering they haven’t been in a playoff position since early November, alarm bells have been sounding about the prospect of this team missing the postseason for the first time in 10 years.

On Wednesday, former Capitals forward T. J. Oshie joined Nick Alberga and Jay Rosehill on Leafs Morning Take ahead of Toronto’s match against Washington. And while there’s lots of panic in the city right now surrounding the Maple Leafs, Oshie came in with some reassurance that all is not lost.

“I think by the end of the season, they’ll be in the mix,” he said. “Sometimes it takes a little bit to spark that belief in what they’re doing, what their systems are. Sometimes they have to do it and see what they have success in. And I saw they were saying, ‘yeah, we had a bad two periods. When we don’t play our game, we don’t have success. When we do play our game, we do have success.’ That means that it seems like it’s starting to click there. That they see, like, this is good and we win and we score goals, this is bad and we look terrible.”

"By the end of the season, I think they'll be in the mix.."

– @TJOshie77 on the #LeafsForever @thegoldenmuzzy | @Jay_D_Rosehill pic.twitter.com/Bpu2thhndP

— TheLeafsNation (@TLNdc) December 17, 2025

While it’s not fun watching the team drop key games, it could benefit their mentality moving forward. From Oshie’s perspective, facing this kind of adversity is what builds stronger, more confident teams in the long run.

“If anything, it takes some scars to go deep,” he said. “It takes some of those big losses and tough moments to build up that confidence in what you guys have. Digging out of something together and having a little bit more belief in each other. So I think they’ll be right in the mix.”

No stranger to adversity, Oshie walked things back to the Capitals’ Cup-winning 2017-2018 season. After winning back-to-back President’s Trophies the years prior and falling in the playoffs, the team suffered offseason losses in 2017 that set them back. That season became a battle, with Oshie himself suffering a 42-game slump where he scored just two goals. In the face of all that, the team came together, and ultimately were able to triumph in the postseason.

“People kinda forgot about us a little bit, and we had a grind of a season,” he said. “So as a team, we decided we were gonna play a certain way, and as a team we would not go below that standard. If someone messed up, another guy is gonna put his face in front of the puck to bail out his buddy. And we just did that through the playoffs. … Everyone was fully committed to, like, this is our standard and it was the players that kept each other accountable.”

Right now, that kind of buy-in seems to be missing from the Leafs, but it’s not too late to turn things around.

Watch the full episode featuring T. J. Oshie here and make sure to tune into Leafs Morning Take weekdays at 11am!

This article first appeared on TheLeafsnation and was syndicated with permission.

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