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ARLINGTON, Va. — T.J. Oshie lingered on the ice long after many of his Washington Capitals teammates departed for the locker room following the loss that eliminated them from the playoffs.

His family was at all four games, including in New York, just in case. They could be the final ones he plays in the NHL.

Oshie, 37, isn’t calling it a career just yet, but the winger acknowledged Tuesday he and doctors must find a solution to his chronic back problems before committing to return for a 17th season.

“I’d love to play next year, but I will need to come back with somewhat of a guarantee that my back won’t be — it’s hard putting everyone through the situation,” Oshie said. “I’d like to find just an answer and a fix to the problem before I make another run at it.”

Oshie’s back and other injuries limited him to 52 of 82 games during the regular season, and he played the series finale against the Rangers with a broken left hand.

“A broken hand is like a hangnail compared to what I go through with my back,” Oshie said, adding he’s often on the floor unable to move when it gives out. “There’s been a lot of just extra things that I have to do to make sure that my back is ready to play an NHL game.”

Already expecting center Nicklas Backstrom to remain on long-term injured in the final year of his contract after stepping away in November because of a nagging hip issue, general manager Brian MacLellan said the team will support Oshie whichever decision he makes and doesn’t have a date by which he’d like an answer.

“If he determines at some point that he feels good, he wants to come back to play, let’s go that way,” MacLellan said. “If he doesn’t, we’ll work it out that way, too.”

Oshie’s presence or lack thereof would certainly affect how the Capitals affect the offseason, whether they can use his $5.75 million salary space or need to fill a major void.

“He’s a big part of our team,” MacLellan said. “You have him, or you go out and find a guy.”

Oshie, who reached the 1,000 games milestone and scored the empty-net goal that clinched a playoff spot, long ago emerged as a popular teammate and fan favorite and was the Capitals’ emotional engine for nearly a decade while playing through injuries.

“He’s a warrior,” captain Alex Ovechkin said. “He’s a guy who brings energy on the ice and off the ice. He have so much respect from the coaching staff to the fans and from the players, as well. He’s a guy who brings everything to this group on the ice and off the ice.”

As for Ovechkin, after scoring just eight goals in his first 43 games of the season, the superstar went on a tear down the stretch to finish with 31 before being held without a point in a playoff series for the first time. At 853, he’s 42 away from Wayne Gretzky’s NHL career record, turns 39 in September and has two years remaining on his contract.

“If I make it, it’s good, but it’s still 42 goals,” Ovechkin said. “It’s kind of a long way. But it’s possible if you’re going to be healthy, yeah.”

MacLellan joked about penciling in Ovechkin for 42 next season, knowing full well it’s unfair to expect one of the oldest players in the league to carry Washington offensively. His hope is also to add through trades and free agency to give Ovechkin some help.

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Giants sell 10% stake to private equity firm

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Giants sell 10% stake to private equity firm

The San Francisco Giants have sold a reported 10% stake in the team to private equity firm Sixth Street.

The team confirmed the deal Tuesday but not the amount of the investment, which was first reported Monday by the New York Times.

Sportico places the value of the franchise and its team-related holdings at $4.2 billion.

Sixth Street’s investment, reportedly approved by Major League Baseball on Monday, will go toward upgrades to Oracle Park and the Giants’ training facilities in Scottsdale, Arizona, as well as Mission Rock, the team’s real estate development project located across McCovey Cove from the ballpark.

Giants president and CEO Larry Baer called it the “first significant investment in three decades” and said the money would not be spent on players.

“This is not about a stockpile for the next Aaron Judge,” Baer told the New York Times. “This is about improvements to the ballpark, making big bets on San Francisco and the community around us, and having the firepower to take us into the next generation.”

Sixth Street is the primary owner of National Women’s Soccer League franchise Bay FC. It also has investments in the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs and Spanish soccer powers Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.

“We believe in the future of San Francisco, and our sports franchises like the Giants are critical ambassadors for our city of innovation, showcasing to the world what’s only made possible here,” Sixth Street co-founder and CEO Alan Waxman said in the news release. “We believe in Larry and the leadership team’s vision for this exciting new era, and we’re proud to be partnering with them as they execute the next chapter of San Francisco Giants success.”

Founded in 2009 and based in San Francisco, Sixth Street has assets totaling $75 billion, according to Front Office Sports.

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Ohtani ‘nervous’ in Tokyo but gets 2 hits, runs

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Ohtani 'nervous' in Tokyo but gets 2 hits, runs

TOKYO — Shohei Ohtani seems impervious to a variety of conditions that afflict most humans — nerves, anxiety, distraction — but it took playing a regular-season big-league game in his home country to change all of that.

After the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ Opening Day 4-1 win over the Chicago Cubs in the Tokyo Dome, Ohtani made a surprising admission. “It’s been a while since I felt this nervous playing a game,” he said. “It took me four or five innings.”

Ohtani had two hits and scored twice, and one of his outs was a hard liner that left his bat at more than 96 mph, so the nerves weren’t obvious from the outside. But clearly the moment, and its weeklong buildup, altered his usually stoic demeanor.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Shohei nervous,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But one thing I did notice was how emotional he got during the Japanese national anthem. I thought that was telling.”

As the Dodgers began the defense of last year’s World Series win, it became a night to showcase the five Japanese players on the two teams. For the first time in league history, two Japanese pitchers — the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga — faced each other on Opening Day. Both pitched well, with Imanaga throwing four hitless innings before being removed after 69 pitches.

“Seventy was kind of the number we had for Shota,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “It was the right time to take him out.”

The Dodgers agreed, scoring three in the fifth inning off reliever Ben Brown. Imanaga kept the Dodgers off balance, but his career-high four walks created two stressful innings that ran up his pitch count.

Yamamoto rode the adrenaline of pitching in his home country, routinely hitting 98 with his fastball and vexing the Cubs with a diving splitter over the course of five three-hit innings. He threw with a kind of abandon, finding a freedom that often eluded him last year in his first year in America.

“I think last year to this year, the confidence and conviction he has throwing the fastball in the strike zone is night and day,” Roberts said. “If he can continue to do that, I see no reason he won’t be in the Cy Young conversation this season.”

Cubs right fielder Seiya Suzuki went hitless in four at bats — the Cubs had only three hits, none in the final four innings against four relievers out of the Dodgers’ loaded bullpen — and rookie Roki Sasaki will make his first start of his Dodger career in the second and final game of the series Wednesday.

“I don’t think there was a Japanese baseball player in this country who wasn’t watching tonight,” Roberts said.

The Dodgers were without Mookie Betts, who left Japan on Monday after it was decided his illness would not allow him to play in this series. And less than an hour before game time, first baseman Freddie Freeman was scratched with what the team termed “left rib discomfort,” a recurrence of an injury he first sustained during last year’s playoffs.

The night started with a pregame celebration that felt like an Olympic opening ceremony in a lesser key. There were Pikachus on the field and a vaguely threatening video depicting the Dodgers and Cubs as Monster vs. Monster. World home-run king Saduharu Oh was on the field before the game, and Roberts called meeting Oh “a dream come true.”

For the most part, the crowd was subdued, as if it couldn’t decide who or what to root for, other than Ohtani. It was admittedly confounding: throughout the first five innings, if fans rooted for the Dodgers they were rooting against Imanaga, but rooting for the Cubs meant rooting against Yamamoto. Ohtani, whose every movement is treated with a rare sense of wonder, presented no such conflict.

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Cardinals shortstop Winn out with wrist soreness

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Cardinals shortstop Winn out with wrist soreness

JUPITER, Fla. — St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn was scratched from the lineup for their exhibition game on Tuesday because of soreness in his right wrist.

Winn was replaced by Jose Barrero in the Grapefruit League matchup with the Miami Marlins, with the regular-season opener nine days away. Winn, who was a 2020 second-round draft pick by the Cardinals, emerged as a productive everyday player during his rookie year in 2024. He batted .267 with 15 home runs, 11 stolen bases and 57 RBIs in 150 games and was named as one of three finalists for the National League Gold Glove Award that went to Ezequiel Tovar of the Colorado Rockies.

Winn had minor surgery after the season to remove a cyst from his hand. In 14 spring training games, he’s batting .098 (4 for 41) with 12 strikeouts.

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