This season has not been fun for Charlie McAvoyin a lot of respects, and it has undoubtedly come at a personal cost given the hits he has taken to his mouth and chin.
But those moments of discomfort and painful adversity have also come amidst some tremendous high points in perhaps the biggest season of personal growth in McAvoy’s NHL career.
There was another high point, and low moment, for McAvoy on Tuesday night as he scored the overtime game-winner in a 2-1 victory over the Los Angeles Kings at TD Garden and lost more teeth after taking another puck to the mouth.
Charlie McAvoy will not be stopped! The #NHLBruins win it in OT and continue their successful strides at home. pic.twitter.com/dsiHoUjrhm— Kasey Hudson (@TheSportsKase) March 11, 2026
McAvoy took questions following the game while fulfilling his obligation as one of the impact players in the win, but also couldn’t run away from just how much this season has sucked for him at times personally. Just seeing him struggle to speak and answer questions in the postgame scrum showed what kind of sacrifice McAvoy is making for the betterment of his hockey team.
McAvoy is missing more teeth and says the injuries piling up is getting exhausting: "You guys get 2 questions, I have to go get more dental work done." "You know, I wish the hits would stop coming. Honestly, just it's tiring. My mouth honestly can't even feel worse, but I'll… pic.twitter.com/q0f3fCtudV— Bridgette Proulx (@bridgetteproulx) March 11, 2026
"You guys get 2 questions, I have to go get more dental work done,” said McAvoy. “You know, I wish the hits would stop coming. Honestly, just…it's tiring. My mouth honestly can't even feel worse, but I'll get some work. We got a really good dentist here who's great.”
Some of this dental work is undoubtedly going to impact McAvoy for the rest of his life and is a high price being paid for a string of bad luck, but it’s also played a part in unlocking the highest level of McAvoy’s game.
The 28-year-old is on pace for the highest point total of his NHL career and is on track to crack double-digit goals for just the third time in his career while working through a number of top-pair defense partners like Mason Lohrei, Nikita Zadorov and Jonathan Aspirot during the season. McAvoy has also elevated his leadership profile through all of the strife and trouble thrown his way while also now having the gold medal Olympic-winning experience to draw upon in the big moments.
The maturity of his on-ice game and his leadership have been unmistakable, and it’s greatly aided a Bruins team that has overachieved by all reasonable measurements.
“I thought he wouldn’t come back, but he’s not getting prettier…that’s for sure,” said Marco Sturm with a smile. “For some reason, he’s had a tough go of it this year. Coming back, he apologized for his first period before [getting hit with the puck] and this kid scored the game-winner.
“He’s a competitor. He played a very, very good third period and scored a beauty of a goal in OT. No surprise. When I watched him [before coaching the Bruins], I always liked the way he competes and the way he plays. The guy next to him is going to look over at him and [see] ‘Is he going to battle through this or is he not?’”
That's sometimes where the true toughness is. It's not about running players through the glass or even dropping the gloves and fighting. It's about playing through pain or discomfort, or making a play when a player knows they are about to be clobbered after getting rid of the puck.
It’s that kind of growth for McAvoy into the example-setting veteran player on this Bruins that the club wanted to see while essentially making McAvoy and David Pastrnakco-captains this season. They are both leaders in their own way and in their own style, but there were aspects of leadership that McAvoy still needed to grow into even as recent as a couple of years ago.
That is no longer the case for a player who’s reaching his ultimate potential as a No. 1 defenseman who plays with an edge, and as a respected leader who could potentially take his team to a Stanley Cup a few years down the road after learning from Hall of Famers like Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeronearlier in his career.
“If you’re a young guy and you see that, you don’t want to be the guy that’s going to quit [when it gets difficult]. Those are the guys you need in a locker room and he’s a good example, and we have other guys like that too,” said Sturm. “They are a great example to the young guys. We always talk about guys like [Zdeno] Chara and [Patrice] Bergeron that set the tone, and I think Charlie took over and is just passing it along. That’s what we do and it’s very important.”
The good news for the Bruins is that pretty much every Stanley Cup winner over the last three decades has featured a legit No. 1, Norris Trophy-caliber defenseman in the prime of his career. McAvoy is entering that phase of his career with the Black and Gold and is leading a defense corps that’s probably one piece away from being Cup-worthy with Hampus Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov as fellow stalwart top-4 defenders in the prime of their careers.
McAvoy is just hitting a peak that should last for a handful of years and is signed through the 2029-30 season when he’ll be 32 years old. It gives the Black and Gold one of the most important pillars on their roster and one of the core Bruins players that, if healthy, was never going to allow this season’s team to sink into last year’s NHL lottery morass.
“He’s tough as nails, man. You always know that he’s going to respond to anything that comes his way,” said Jeremy Swayman, of his fellow gold medalist McAvoy doing the job in front of him. “That’s a special individual on this team, and I’m so happy that he’s getting the success that he deserves right now.”
The toughness bleeds through to the rest of the Bruins team, and McAvoy is fully living up to the potential that’s always been there for him since the B’s drafted him in the middle of the first round in the 2016 NHL Draft. Tuesday night’s OT winner, after taking another puck to the mouth, was just another chapter in this season’s story for McAvoy, but it’s another one that shows exactly what kind of stuff he’s made out of.
