Charlie McAvoy changed his red, white and blue for black and gold on Thursday for the Bruins\u2019 morning skate. But rest assured, those American colors will not be running from the B\u2019s standout defenseman any time soon.<\/p>\n
McAvoy returned to everyday life after he and his USA teammates captured the gold medal over Canada in the Winter Olympics in Italy last Sunday but, admittedly, his mind still had not fully made the transition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard, honestly. It feels almost like a Stanley Cup thing where the year should be over now. Mentally I had that (feeling),\u201d said McAvoy. \u201cThen you have to dial back in and realize what this team has done so far this year and this position we\u2019ve put ourselves in, what we\u2019ve done has been really special, too. There\u2019s so much more left of this year, switching back to putting the B on and I\u2019m so excited for the second half.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he will have to refocus, the memories from Milan will be indelible. Of all the heroes that took home the gold, McAvoy\u2019s moment is in the upper echelon of sequences that secured America\u2019s first gold in 46 years, right behind Connor Hellebuyck\u2019s paddle save on Devon Toews and the Zach Werenski-to-Jack Hughes golden game-winner. It came in the third period with the score tied and Canada dominating. Tom Wilson had Hellebuyck down and out and lifted it past him. McAvoy was there on the goal line to block the shot and scoop it away from danger.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it happened, the game was so fast and the pressure was so high, I didn\u2019t even really stop to realize what had happened until after when everyone was sending me all that stuff,\u201d said McAvoy. \u201cIt was a huge save and then seeing it, it would have definitely went in if I wasn\u2019t there. Probably the only thing that got past Helly. It was just unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winning gold gave McAvoy some career validation. He\u2019s been on the other side, at 4 Nations last year and losing in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup. Winning is difficult, especially in a sport as capricious as hockey. Hopefully, he said, a Cup is somewhere on the horizon.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s the little moments away from the ice that will stick with him most.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think by far, the camaraderie (was the biggest takeaway). We stayed in the village the whole time, so I\u2019ll have that whole experience. From going over early for the opening ceremonies. \u2026 It was a dream,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think what I\u2019ll remember most is just all the time we spent together as a team in the dining hall, the trainers\u2019 room, we had our own little area in the USA building, all those things, the bus rides, all of that camaraderie aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n
That camaraderie extended to the gold-winning women\u2019s team. Politics being what they are, a controversy erupted after the game when President Trump called after the game and, in the midst of the wild celebration, he told the player that they would \u201chave to\u201d invite the women\u2019s team that won gold as well. As one player yelled \u201cabsolutely\u201d and another \u201ctwo for two,\u201d Trump said that if he didn\u2019t that he would be impeached. The players laughed, and they haven\u2019t heard the end of it yet. McAvoy, like many players, did his best to clear the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re sort of sorry for how we responded to it in that moment. Things happened really quick there,\u201d said McAvoy, who has a photo on his phone of the golden-goal twins, Megan Keller and Hughes. \u201cIf you know the men\u2019s team and the relationships that we have and the time we spent with the women\u2019s team and how we supported them, it\u2019s certainly not reflective of how we feel about them and their accomplishments. What they did was unbelievable. We had that third floor in the village and some of the women were there and the trainers\u2019 room, everyone was there at all times on, the men and women\u2019s teams. We just made friends for life with them, we supported them the same way they supported us. We share this together. I know that. I\u2019m pretty confident they know how I feel about them and what they\u2019ve been able to accomplish and the way they did it, with how dominant they played. I think America should be so proud of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
McAvoy also reflected on the difficult road that he\u2019s taken over the last year. From the major shoulder surgery that was preceded by a dangerous infection from the injury he suffered at 4 Nations to the broken jaw that required surgery in November, he\u2019s had some hills to climb. He talked about that with his wife before the gold medal game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had talked about, just how much has gone on in our lives this year, a lot of it public, a lot of it not, what we\u2019ve gone through as a family. I just kept in my head that \u2018we deserve this.\u2019 We deserve something good to happen to us,\u201d said McAvoy. \u201cYou just try to be a good person and sometimes good things will happen to you. This is just amazing for my family, to have them there, every one of them, my wife and kid, my buddies from Long Beach there, my whole family, where were able to celebrate this together. We\u2019ll have this memory forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
His wife had given him a stack of letters that family members had written him before the Games. He sat down to read them before the opening ceremonies. It left such a mark, he read them again before the gold medal game. After the win, he remembers seeing his father and thinking, This is the guy who put me on the ice in Long Beach, New York when I was two years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of this would feel like it would mean anything if I didn\u2019t have my family to share it with,\u201d said McAvoy. \u201cYou don\u2019t do it by yourself. It does take a village. Just to have that feeling of pure pride (after the win). I kept telling him, \u2018We did it!\u2019 Because you can\u2019t get there by yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charlie McAvoy changed his red, white and blue for black and gold on Thursday for the Bruins\u2019 morning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[113110,23,1785,19859,61709,3,385,99,42270,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-492175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-2026-winter-olympics","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-boston-bruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-charlie-mcavoy","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-team-usa","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}