This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Charlie McAvoy
Boston Bruins Defense
Fifty-six points, 24:38 a night, plus-31 and a 61.2 per cent chance share — and shoulder surgery that will cost him the first two months.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | BOS | 63 | 7 | 25 | 32 | +20 | 53 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 77 | 9.1 | 22:09 |
| 2018-19 | BOS | 54 | 7 | 21 | 28 | +14 | 45 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 79 | 8.9 | 22:10 |
| 2019-20 | BOS | 67 | 5 | 27 | 32 | +24 | 41 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 101 | 5.0 | 23:10 |
| 2020-21 | BOS | 51 | 5 | 25 | 30 | +22 | 38 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 92 | 5.4 | 24:00 |
| 2021-22 | BOS | 78 | 10 | 46 | 56 | +31 | 66 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 166 | 6.0 | 24:38 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 313 | 34 | 144 | 178 | +111 | 243 | 9 | 1 | 11 | 515 | 6.6 | 23:17 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
10 goals and 46 assists in 78 games — 56 points at 24:38 a night, plus-31, with 4 power-play goals and 1 shorthanded on 166 shots and 66 penalty minutes.
61.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,418 minutes, the 99th percentile among defencemen. His ice went 75-47 against an expectation of 70.84-44.97 — four goals of scoring above what the chances predicted and two more conceded than they did. The share is enormous and the goals matched it, which is the rarest combination on any page in this book.
24:38 a night is the 92nd percentile and 3:07 of it was power play, the 95th. Boston played him in everything.
The Finesse Game
46 assists and 144 in 313 career games, and the first pass is the fastest decision on this roster. 1.35 even-strength points per 60 is the 88th percentile among defencemen and 38 per cent of his points came on the power play, the 88th.
166 attempts at a median of 47 feet at 92.4 mph — the 30th percentile of velocity. The shot is the one ordinary thing about him, and ten goals off 166 attempts is a fair return on a point shot nobody fears.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 211. He closes a gap early and takes the puck rather than the man — 4.84 hits per 60 at the 61st percentile and 4.06 blocks at the 48th are both ordinary, and the defending is nonetheless the best on this roster.
He drew 0.81 penalties per 60, the 93rd percentile among defencemen, which for a defenceman is remarkable and comes from carrying the puck out of his own end through people.
The engine is the physical asset. 9.06 miles per sixty is the 96th percentile among defencemen and 3.72 miles a game is the 99th among all skaters this book tracks, at a 22.7 mph top speed, the 87th. Nobody at his position covered more ground.
The Intangibles
Fourteenth overall in 2016, 313 games by twenty-four, 178 points, and the first Boston defenceman since Zdeno Chara who a rival would build a plan around.
He is 24, on the first year of an eight-year contract. He had shoulder surgery in the summer and will not play until December, which on a club whose blue line is otherwise Hampus Lindholm, a 36-year-old and three men who play under twenty minutes is the single most expensive absence in the Atlantic.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
61.2% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 53.1% for his club in the minutes he sat: +8.1, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“46 assists and 144 in 313 career games, and the first pass is the fastest decision on this roster”
“He closes a gap early and takes the puck rather than the man”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,418 minutes
- Expected goals
- 61.2%
- 99th pct
- Shot attempts
- 57.8%
- 97th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 75 for, 47 against. Expected: 70.8 and 45.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 76 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2021-22 · 78 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 91st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.19 a game
- Distance
- 3.72 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.4 mph
- 50th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2021-22 · 1418 minutes at five-on-five
- Mike Reilly27%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2021-22
- The club
- BOS took 56.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 61.2% — 5.0 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,418 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patrice Bergeron | 71.9% | 53.9% | 64.2% |
| Brad Marchand | 67.9% | 56.7% | 58.0% |
| David Pastrnak | 63.7% | 60.0% | 54.9% |
71.9% together, 53.9% for him apart and 64.2% for Bergeron apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
223 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 63% from beyond forty.