This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Charlie McAvoy
Boston Bruins Defense
Fifty-two points in sixty-seven games, and the 95th percentile in attacking-zone starts.
| 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 | BOS | 67 | 7 | 45 | 52 | +29 | 54 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 105 | 6.7 | 22:18 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 380 | 41 | 189 | 230 | +140 | 297 | 11 | 1 | 13 | 620 | 6.6 | 23:07 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
7 goals and 45 assists in 67 games — 52 points at 22:18 a night, plus-29, on 105 shots and 54 penalty minutes.
55.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,131 minutes, the 89th percentile. His ice went 60-32 against an expectation of 55.09-43.91.
One number complicates the reputation and it belongs here rather than buried: he started 44.8 per cent of his shifts in the attacking end, the 95th percentile in the league. McAvoy is spoken of as a shutdown defenceman and he was deployed as an offensive one. Both can be true — a coach can trust a man and still start him in the good end — but the share is not evidence of the former.
The Finesse Game
105 attempts at a median of 46 feet, 59 per cent from beyond 40 and 18 per cent from inside 20, converting at 6.67 per cent. The shot is not the tool.
189 career assists in 380 games is a genuinely high rate, and the mechanism is skating rather than passing vision: he carries the puck out of his own end himself and arrives at the far blue line with the play still in front of him. 3.31 miles a game is the 94th percentile in the league and almost all of it is with the puck.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 211, and he is a hard defenceman to play against — 297 penalty minutes in 380 games, and he finishes checks along the wall rather than steering people to the outside.
The caveat on all of it is availability. He has never played a full 82-game season in six years, and a defenceman who plays 22 minutes when healthy is worth what he is only if he is.
The Intangibles
Fourteenth overall in 2016, out of Boston University, and he stepped into a playoff series at nineteen and did not look out of place.
He is 25 and now unambiguously the best defenceman on a club that has lost its identity at centre. With Bergeron gone, the minutes that used to be handed to a Selke winner have to go somewhere, and the most likely place is McAvoy’s pair — which would make that 95th-percentile zone start disappear and give the first real test of the shutdown reputation.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
22.5% of his attempts in the slot, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
“he carries the puck out of his own end himself and arrives at the far blue line with the play still in front of him”
“he finishes checks along the wall rather than steering people to the outside”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,131 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.6%
- 90th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.2%
- 80th 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: 60 for, 32 against. Expected: 55.1 and 43.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 6 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 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.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 1131 minutes at five-on-five
- Dmitry Orlovnow CAR13%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- BOS took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.6% — 2.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,131 minutes at five-on-five — 76th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matt Grzelcyk | 54.1% | 57.4% | 53.3% |
| David Pastrnak | 54.5% | 56.3% | 54.3% |
| Brad Marchand | 58.5% | 54.0% | 59.7% |
54.1% together, 57.4% for him apart and 53.3% for Grzelcyk apart. He was better away from Grzelcyk, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Grzelcyk.
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
138 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 18% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 59% from beyond forty.