BOSTON -- It all started the morning of Feb. 16, when the United States team for the 4 Nations Face-Off finally made it to Boston from Montreal through a major snowstorm. They sat on the runway for what felt like forever, had gotten in around 6 a.m.
Charlie McAvoy, meanwhile, was not feeling good. That whole Sunday, his shoulder kept getting worse and worse, the pain increasing by the hour.
“That night, we were staying at the Ritz downtown, I didn’t sleep the whole night, because I was just in so much pain,” the Boston Bruins defenseman said. “I knew the next day we played Sweden and I wasn’t playing, they were like, ‘Give it time.’ The final was on Thursday, which seemed like an eternity, like, get healthy.
“The next day was when stuff really flew off the rails.”
He had sustained an injury to his right shoulder acromioclavicular (AC) joint in a game against Finland on Feb. 13, underwent treatment and played against Canada two days later. But the pain wasn’t presenting like the AC joint injury, with a marked redness creeping up his shoulder. It was confusing doctors and leaving McAvoy in tremendous pain.
He went to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he underwent X-rays, MRIs and bloodwork and was diagnosed with an infection, necessitating an irrigation and debridement Feb. 18.
McAvoy did not play again this season.
“I feel a lot about it, every emotion you can have,” McAvoy said Thursday at the Bruins’ end-of-season media availability. “I’m not angry at any one individual. I’m angry at what happened. I’m sad about what happened. A little bit of the ‘Why me?’ as I’m sure anyone would ask with what happened. So, it’s a lot of different emotions.
“It cost me my season. It cost my season, it cost me a lot. I’ve spent a lot of time emotionally just sitting with it because that was the reality of it. I’m sitting at home, with a PICC [peripherally inserted central catheter] line and this and that and I can’t play and I can’t help my team.”
He had contracted a rare staph infection, though no one -- including the head of infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital -- is quite sure exactly how it was introduced. There was the injection to try to numb the area, a common procedure. Then came the infection.
“What happened to me was simply bad luck,” McAvoy said. “There’s always a risk of that happening, but you don’t ever hear about it. And it happened to me. So, you want to talk about a perfect storm, the why me and how did this happen? Like, there’s not necessarily that anyone did anything wrong; I just happened to have an infection that took place.”
It could have, as he said, been his Under Armour, a pillow at the hotel, his gear.
It’s impossible to know.
“We could speculate all day -- and trust me, I have,” McAvoy said. “You think I don’t want to blame somebody for this? So, I’ve spent that time and I’ve shed those tears on that.
“The reality is there’s no one to blame. It’s just bad luck that this happened.”
It was an abrupt end to a season that started with so much promise but ended with the Bruins (33-39-10) finishing last in the Eastern Conference and out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2016.
“I don’t even feel like I played hockey this year,” he said. “Which is so unfortunate because I think I played more games than I might have even thought, but I haven’t played since February. At times it’s felt like that was last season or something separate in my head because it’s felt like it’s been so long.
“You’re running a race and you don’t get to cross the finish line.”
McAvoy only came off antibiotics last week, more than two months after the initial injury. The repair of the injury, he estimated, should take about three months. He still isn’t cleared to play but was getting close.
He said had Boston been in position to make the playoffs or been in the running down the stretch, it would have been a conversation with management and doctors about trying to clear him. He had been preparing to come back and play this season, with McAvoy saying that acting that way “gave me purpose, gave me a reason to get out of bed, like it wasn’t that dramatic, but to come to the rink and behave like I still had a reason.”
That didn’t end up mattering.
But the good news is the injury to the AC joint will not hinder McAvoy in the future, will not be something he has to manage.
“I have no restrictions this summer, I have no limitations on anything, which allows me to have a big summer, which I’m really excited about,” he said.
What happened is not something that will impact McAvoy’s desire to play in future international events, especially the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics, which he called “my dream of dreams.”
Even playing in the game against Canada on Feb. 15, after the injury, was part of that.
“It’s the aftermath of that that it cost me my year,” he said. “There’s a lot of -- I don’t want to say regret -- but an acceptance of what happened and it [stinks] and I’m still coming to grips with it. But I wouldn’t trade it. The experience I wouldn’t trade, the friendships, all of that. That’s what you dream of.”
Still, it made a difficult season even more difficult. He was unable to return to help the Bruins while they sank deeper in the standings, eventually selling off assets at the NHL Trade Deadline on March 7 and finishing last in the East.
“You’re watching your friends, your teammates struggle. You’re trying to be there to help with that, [but] you can’t,” McAvoy said. “So many things this year were just unfortunate, so there’s frustration. There’s certainly motivation to never be here again, to find ways for us to improve this culture, to get back to what it looked like because this isn’t a good place to be right now.”
This will be the longest summer of McAvoy’s career, after he made his NHL debut in the 2017 playoffs and he and the Bruins have played in every postseason since. It’s the silver lining he’s taking from all that’s happened.
It’s not just his health that he’s looking to recover this offseason, though; it’s also the team he’s known and been a part of his whole career. It’s a team that, at the start of the season, he said was ready to win, to take the next step with a core that has since scattered throughout the NHL: Brad Marchand in Florida with the Panthers, Brandon Carlo in Toronto with the Maple Leafs, Charlie Coyle in Colorado with the Avalanche, Trent Frederic in Edmonton with the Oilers.
“That starts very quickly after this,” he said. “Getting together and establishing what we want, what our pillars are going to look like, what we want the culture to get back to and how we’re going to do it.
“What an opportunity. What an exciting challenge that that’s going to be for us. Not just us, but a few other guys. We’re going to take it head on. We’re going to do everything that we can. You can’t do it by yourself, we’re going to do it together, but we’re really excited about the opportunity and the challenge, what it presents and how we can be a part of the solution.”
Because this? This isn’t what he’s come to expect from the Bruins.
“To not feel like this again,” McAvoy said of what he wants. “Never been here, I don’t want to be here again.”