This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Charlie McAvoy
Boston Bruins Defense
50 games, 23:40 a night, and the only defenceman here whose absence changed the shape of the team.
| 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 | BOS | 50 | 7 | 16 | 23 | 0 | 46 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 98 | 7.1 | 23:40 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 504 | 60 | 240 | 300 | +144 | 429 | 14 | 2 | 18 | 851 | 7.0 | 23:26 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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 16 assists in 50 games for 23 points, even, on 23:40 a night — the heaviest workload on the club by four minutes.
50.3 per cent at five-on-five, the 55th percentile and the best figure on the blue line. He was hurt at the Four Nations tournament in February and did not play again; the club was 27th in chance creation with him and worse without.
The Finesse Game
The best skating defenceman in the organisation and one of the better puck-movers in the league when healthy. He beats a forecheck by carrying rather than passing, joins a rush as a genuine attacker, and closes gaps at the blue line as well as anybody.
The shot is heavy without being a weapon — 98 shots in 50 games, 7 goals, and most of the offence comes from the second wave rather than the point. 16 assists in 50 games is a fair rate for a defenceman on a club that scored 222 goals.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 211, and he plays a hard, physical game that is unusual for a defenceman with this much skill. He finishes checks, defends his net front, and does not avoid anything.
46 penalty minutes in 50 games is a high rate and it is part of the style. The bigger issue is availability: 50 games last season, and he has cleared 70 twice in eight years.
The Intangibles
The most important player on this roster after Pastrnak, and the one the rebuild is least able to replace.
At 27, on a long contract, with a body that has not held up. Everything Boston hopes to be in three years assumes 24 minutes a night from a defenceman who has averaged 62 games a season for his career, and there is no version of the plan that survives that not improving.
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.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
61% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“He beats a forecheck by carrying rather than passing, joins a rush as a genuine attacker, and closes gaps at the blue line as well as anybody.”
“6-1 and 211, and he plays a hard, physical game that is unusual for a defenceman with this much skill.”
“He finishes checks, defends his net front, and does not avoid anything.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 889 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.3%
- 56th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.2%
- 55th 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: 34 for, 30 against. Expected: 35.9 and 35.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 41 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 84 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, 2024-25 · 50 games
- Top speed
- 21.6 mph
- 48th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.64 a game
- Distance
- 3.50 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.6 mph
- 48th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
2024-25 · 889 minutes at five-on-five
- Mason Lohrei27%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- BOS took 48.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.3% — 1.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 889 minutes at five-on-five — 44th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nikita Zadorov | 50.1% | 50.4% | 48.5% |
| David Pastrnak | 49.9% | 50.5% | 51.6% |
| Pavel Zacha | 49.3% | 50.8% | 50.4% |
50.1% together, 50.4% for him apart and 48.5% for Zadorov apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
137 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.