Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy will miss Thursday night's Championship Game of the 4 Nations Face-Off for Team USA against Team Canada at the TD Garden. News broke later Monday night that he was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital.
BREAKING: Sources: Bruins/Team USA defenseman Charlie McAvoy admitted to Mass. General Hospital as he deals with an upper-body injury. https://t.co/FZHCR9abOV
— Jim McBride (@globejimmcbride) February 18, 2025
As it turns out, McAvoy will be out for an extended period after sustaining an infection that required surgery. The Bruins front office is reportedly not happy with how things went down that led to their No. 1 defenseman being hospitalized. NHL insider Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet said that the Boston front office was "extremely unhappy" with how things played out.
Bruins reportedly uphappy with handling of Charlie McAvoy injury by Team USA
"I think the people who are the angriest is the team, the Bruins," said Friedman. "If you read their statement today, they make it very clear that they are unhappy with how this all went down, that they don't feel that their player was given the proper treatment. It seems now that McAvoy was originally injured in the opener against Finland. There's a play where Joel Armia takes him hard into the post.
"And it sounds like -- I don't know if he got a shot or something. I don't know exactly what happened, but he played Saturday, it looks like, with much more severe an injury than he was initially led to believe, and everybody was initially led to believe, which makes his performance all that more impressive."
In Team USA's 3-1 victory over Canada on Saturday night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, McAvoy was the best defenseman on the ice for coach Mike Sullivan, who happens to be his father-in-law. However, when the team got back to Boston following the game, things went South quickly and it led to a hospital stay and surgery. Then, instead of Team USA announcing that McAvoy would not play on Thursday night, it was the Bruins.
"I remember (Tuesday) when it was the Bruins and not Team USA that announced that McAvoy was out, there were people saying, 'How come the Bruins, whose GM is the GM of Team Canada, are announcing that Charlie McAvoy wouldn't play?', Friedman said. "And then it became pretty clear that it's because the Bruins were extremely unhappy with the way this had been handled, and that they felt that in this particular case, McAvoy didn't get the proper care."
The Bruins have a right to be upset, but let's remember who the medical staff and team doctors for Team USA are. It's the medical staff from the Minnesota Wild, who the Bruins had an issue with last season with the records they were given following the trade at the deadline to acquire Pat Maroon who was dealing with injuries at the time.
This is not the first injury that McAvoy has been dealing with recently as he missed a lot of time in January and early February with an injury, but he returned to the lineup and made an immediate impact by scoring goals in his first two games back against New York Rangers and Minnesota Wild. Now the focus turns off the ice to his health and a safe recovery.