This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Charlie McAvoy

Twenty-four fifty-one a night, thirty-five assists and eighty-six penalty minutes — a number one doing every job at once.

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	BOS	74	12	35	47	+4	86	1	0	3	133	9.0	24:51
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	454	53	224	277	+144	383	12	1	16	753	7.0	23:24

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

12 goals and 35 assists in 74 games — 47 points at 24:51 a night, plus-4, with 3 game-winners on 133 shots at 9.02 per cent and 86 penalty minutes.

50.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,370 minutes, the 60th percentile — the most ice of any player on the club. His ice went 67-51 against an expectation of 60.53-58.45: exactly the scoring the chances predicted, and ten fewer goals conceded than they did.

The Finesse Game

133 attempts at a median of 44 feet, with 56 per cent from beyond 40 and 15 per cent from inside 20, converting at 9.02 per cent — a high rate from that distance and the reason he scored twelve.

He carries the puck out of his own zone rather than passing it out, and the skating is what makes twenty-five minutes a night possible against the other side’s best line. He gains the offensive line under control and he will join the rush as a fourth man.

35 assists and 224 in 454 career games. He walks the line, holds the puck until a forechecker commits, and the outlet is early.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 211 and he plays much heavier than that. He finishes checks, he clears the front of his own net, and he will answer a cross-check — 383 penalty minutes in 454 games is a rate that says the edge is deliberate.

Some of the 86 minutes are the cost of playing twenty-five a night against the best forwards in the league. Not all of them are.

The Intangibles

Fourteenth overall in 2016, out of Boston University, and 454 games and 277 points, all of them here, with a career plus-144.

He is 26 and has been the club’s number one defenceman since he was 21. In the first season after Bergeron and Krejčí, he played more than anyone on the roster and took the hardest assignment every night — a club that finishes sixth having lost two Hall of Fame centres has somebody doing that, and it is him.

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
20.3% of his attempts in the slot, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“**He carries the puck out of his own zone rather than passing it out**, and the skating is what makes twenty-five minutes a night possible against the other side's best line.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**35 assists and 224 in 454 career games.** He walks the line, holds the puck until a forechecker commits, and the outlet is early.”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“**He finishes checks, he clears the front of his own net, and he will answer a cross-check** — **383 penalty minutes in 454 games** is a rate that says the edge is deliberate.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“**He finishes checks, he clears the front of his own net, and he will answer a cross-check** — **383 penalty minutes in 454 games** is a rate that says the edge is deliberate.”
retaliatesa strength· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“**He finishes checks, he clears the front of his own net, and he will answer a cross-check** — **383 penalty minutes in 454 games** is a rate that says the edge is deliberate.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“**In the first season after Bergeron and Krejčí, he played more than anyone on the roster and took the hardest assignment every night** — a club that finishes sixth having lost two Hall of Fame centres has somebody doing that, and it is him.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,370 minutes

Expected goals: 50.9%; 60th pct
Shot attempts: 48.6%; 42nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 67 for, 51 against. Expected: 60.5 and 58.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

93rd

Numbers

60th

The report ranks him 33 points above where the numbers do. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 80 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, 2023-24 · 74 games

Top speed: 22.6 mph; 83rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.99 a game
Distance: 3.79 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.6 mph; 63rd pct

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

2023-24 · 1370 minutes at five-on-five

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, 2023-24

The club: BOS took 49.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.9% — 1.2 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,370 minutes at five-on-five — 93rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Matt Grzelcyk	51.0%	50.8%	38.6%
David Pastrnak	53.2%	49.2%	51.4%
Pavel Zacha	52.4%	50.0%	47.6%

51.0% together, 50.8% for him apart and 38.6% for Grzelcyk apart. Grzelcyk was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Grzelcyk than for him.

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

197 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 13 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 15% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 56% from beyond forty.