McAvoy mature beyond his years
Calder Trophy candidate on Bruins’ blue line played on four teams last season
BOSTON— Bruins defenceman Charlie McAvoy began his first full season as a professional hockey player Thursday — one goal, one assist — and is a strong candidate for rookie of the year.
However long his career lasts, he is unlikely to match the frenetic early months of this year, when he played for five teams and in two international competitions, the NCAA tournament and the Stanley Cup playoffs, all at age 19.
“A lot of dreams came true last year,” he said at a recent Bruins practice.
The 14th pick in the 2016 NHL draft, McAvoy interrupted his sophomore season at Boston University to play for the gold-medal-winning U.S. team at the world junior championship in January. He helped lead BU to a berth in the NCAA tournament in March.
Four days after returning home with BU following its season-ending loss, McAvoy was practising with the Providence Bruins of the American Hockey League.
“He was ready to make the jump, maturity-wise and skill-wise,” said junior forward Jordan Greenway, one of McAvoy’s roommates at BU.
McAvoy had played only four AHL games when the Bruins lost two top defencemen heading into the Stanley Cup playoffs against the Ottawa Senators. They summoned him to Boston, but before he could fly with the team to Canada, he had to stop at his BU dorm to pick up his passport and a couple of suits.
He made his NHL debut in April, paired with the Bruins’ captain, Zdeno Chara, who played his first NHL game a month before McAvoy was born in 1997.
The Bruins lost the series in six games, but McAvoy picked up three assists and averaged 26 minutes, 12 seconds of ice time, second to Chara.
McAvoy joined the U.S. team for the world championship in France and Germany in May.
Charlie McAvoy Sr., with his brother Kevin, owns McAvoy Plumbing in Long Beach, N.Y., a business started by their grandfather in 1926. That his only son, the second of his four children, was able to handle so much in such a short time did not surprise him.
“He’s always been a pretty grounded kid, and he doesn’t have my temper,” McAvoy Sr. said. “He stays in the moment. In fact, he’s always telling me, ‘Dad, don’t get too far ahead of yourself.’ ”
Now six-foot-one and 211 pounds, the younger McAvoy started skating when he was 3. After playing for Long Beach High School as a freshman, McAvoy lived with a billet family in Michigan for two years while playing for the U.S. National Team Development Program.
With the help of his mother, Jen, a former teacher, he took online classes so he could enrol at BU a year early. As a 17-year-old freshman, he often competed against players five and six years older, but he led the Terriers’ defence with 25 points in 37 games, earning Hockey East AllRookie Team honours.
BU coach David Quinn said, “Charlie’s an easy guy to love.”
Quinn added: “I think he’s got an incredible ability, which I think great players have, to have swagger without arrogance. He’s very confident in who he is, and he knows how good he is, but he doesn’t have an arrogance about him that affects his play or his teammates.”
What the Bruins like about McAvoy, who turns 20 in December, is his ability to move the puck up ice, a good fit for coach Bruce Cassidy’s aggressive style. And he is not shy about using his size.
Cassidy also has been impressed by McAvoy’s makeup.
“Things don’t bother him,” he said. “And he always seems to play better on the bigger stages.”