{"id":103100,"date":"2025-08-28T11:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T11:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/103100\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T11:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T11:03:09","slug":"mcavoy-feels-great-ready-for-season-with-bruins-after-shoulder-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/103100\/","title":{"rendered":"McAvoy feels ‘great,’ ready for season with Bruins after shoulder injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

PLYMOUTH, Mich. — Charlie McAvoy<\/a> said he feels “great” and is ready to get back to work for the Boston Bruins after missing the final 25 games of last season with a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n

“It was a long summer, but in a lot of ways it was beneficial,” McAvoy said Wednesday, “a chance to have a lot of months, to put in a lot of work, which is nice, something that I haven’t really had since we have always been a playoff team.<\/p>\n

“It was a longer summer, but I used it to my advantage.”<\/p>\n

The defenseman took part in the United States Men’s Olympic Orientation Camp<\/a> and was one of six players named to the preliminary roster for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026<\/a> in February. He also represented the United States at the 4-Nations Face-Off but injured the acromioclavicular (AC) joint of his right shoulder in a 6-1 win against Finland in the opener of the best-on-best tournament at Bell Centre in Montreal on Feb. 13.<\/p>\n

McAvoy had treatment and played against Canada two days later, a 3-1 victory, but it didn’t feel like an AC joint injury. Instead, a marked redness was creeping up his shoulder. The doctors were confused, and McAvoy was in severe pain.<\/p>\n

After the U.S. team arrived in Boston for the second leg of 4 Nations, McAvoy had X-rays, MRIs and bloodwork at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was diagnosed with an infection, necessitating an irrigation and debridement Feb. 18.<\/p>\n

McAvoy did not play again. The Bruins (33-39-10) finished last in the Atlantic Division and 15th in the Eastern Conference to miss the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2015-16.<\/p>\n

“What happened to me was simply bad luck,” McAvoy said April 17 during breakup day. “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? There’s not necessarily that anyone did anything wrong; I just happened to have an infection that took place.<\/p>\n

“The reality is there’s no one to blame. It’s just bad luck that this happened.”<\/p>\n

With McAvoy out of the lineup, the Bruins sent captain Brad Marchand<\/a> to the rival Florida Panthers before the NHL Trade Deadline on March 7. Florida won the Stanley Cup for the second straight season.<\/p>\n

“I got healthy pretty close to the end of the season,” McAvoy said. “If we had been in a different situation, I could have played. I would have played if we had made the playoffs, but it was probably for the best that I didn’t have to and gave my shoulder a full chance to heal and feel good this year.”<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old is entering his ninth season and has played all 504 of his NHL regular-season games for the Bruins, but this is the first time in his NHL career that Boston is entering a season after missing the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Marco Sturm was named coach June 5.<\/p>\n

“It’s different, really, from any year that I’ve had, because we don’t miss the playoffs,” McAvoy said. “We’re trying to reestablish our culture, which we feel like maybe slipped a little bit. Obviously, you’re going through a coaching change, so we have a bunch of different things that we’re trying to bring in, but the way that we all see it is what an incredible opportunity.”<\/p>\n

So is playing for the United States.<\/p>\n

With NHL players going to the Olympics for the first time since Sochi in 2014 and getting a taste of international best on best at 4 Nations, McAvoy can’t wait for the 2026 Games.<\/p>\n

“That was what we were all waiting for, to get a chance to play best on best,” McAvoy said. “And going into [4 Nations], I think it was like, just the butterflies, the nerves, like this is the dream, is to play in this. The 4 Nations wasn’t a thing, so it was always Olympics. And then 4 Nations became a thing, and it still was very, very special. But here we go, and now it’s the dream come true.”<\/p>\n

NHL.com senior writer Amalie Benjamin contributed to this report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PLYMOUTH, Mich. — Charlie McAvoy said he feels “great” and is ready to get back to work for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-103100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}