Haggerty: Injuries hitting Team USA hard at 4 Nations (updated with McAvoy update from Bruins)

It’s all been going according to plan for Team USA as they clinched a spot in the 4 Nations Faceoff tourney before everybody else, and the Americans have been the talk of the short tournament thus far.

But they’ve suddenly hit a massive speed bump on the road thanks to a rash of injuries as both Tkachuk brothers were missing from the lineup by the end of Monday night’s 2-1 loss to Team Sweden at TD Garden, and the Bruins announced Charlie McAvoy (upper body) will be out of Thursday's final after being hospitalized at Mass General for an injury suffered in the massive, emotional victory over Team Canada last weekend.

UPDATE: The Bruins have issued another statement saying McAvoy has an infection in shoulder, where there is a "significant" injury.

The game itself was a solid effort from both hockey teams considering that everything had already been clinched, but a frustrating one for an American group that hit iron five times while getting just a single Chris Kreider rebound score past Swedish netminder Samuel Ersson (32 saves).

The McAvoy development is obviously a big blow to a Team USA that needed his punishing physicality in their instant classic victory over Team Canada, and a concern to a Boston Bruins hockey club that’s going to need him for the 25-game NHL stretch run set to get started this weekend.

I’m serious when I say that this hit by Charlie McAvoy on Connor McDavid is a perfect hockey hit. Like there’s nothing about it that you could do better pic.twitter.com/GzsELmnWva

— Boston Bruins Watcher (@WatcherBruins) February 16, 2025

None of this even counts top center Auston Matthews (upper-body injury) as he also sat out Monday night’s loss to the Swedes, and left the Red, White and Blue with just 10 forwards for the bulk of the game once Brady Tkachuk was removed from the game after crashing hard into the post during the first period.

Between the injuries and some challenging travel situations coming from Montreal to Boston, the USA Hockey players admitted that Monday night’s game was much more of a grind-it-out situation than the first few games of the 4 Nations tournament.

“It was hard. We could make excuses, but guys battled, and we battled together,” said Dylan Larkin. “Guys stepped into lineup and got to play for the first time in the tournament and [Chris Kreider] played so well and scored a goal for us.

“We had the chances to win that hockey game and we just didn’t have the answers for [Samuel] Ersson in that hockey game. It’s hard when you see guys going down, but we kept going and I was proud of the way we stuck together. We weren’t perfect, but the buy-in and the compete level was unbelievable. We’re going to need that.”

The good news is that Team USA didn’t believe reinforcements were going to need to be utilized for any of the fallen Americans.

“Brady obviously had a lower body injury. We held him out more for precautionary reasons at that point,” said Mike Sullivan. “I haven’t had an update after the game. We’ll see how it responds, but I don’t anticipate that being an issue.

“It’s not easy when you lose somebody that early in the game and we’re already down one [forward]. We tried to spread the minutes around a bit so nobody got an extensive workload, but when you’re down two guys that early in the game it is what it is. I thought the guys competed hard.”

There were no real updates about Matthews or Matthew Tkachuk, but both were spotted walking around TD Garden in suits just as goaltender Connor Hellebuyck was with the night off as Jake Oettinger and Jeremy Swayman dressed for game action.

It was just a few minutes after Tkachuk was running around doing his wrecking ball act against Team Sweden as it looked like the US was once again going to bully their way to a win at the international hockey level. The injuries ended up pushing Jack Eichel (22:11), Jake Guentzel (23:36) and Jack Hughes (21:21) into some big ice time workloads by the time it was all over, but the good news is that both Team USA and Team Canada will have a couple of days to recover before Thursday’s 4 Nations championship.

Brady Tkachuk announcing his presence to the Swedes pic.twitter.com/j9YTc3XFi3

— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) February 18, 2025

Injuries or no injuries, the final game for the trophy being a USA/Canada rematch is something that absolutely everybody is looking for as rabid hockey fans are scrambling for tickets and paying massive prices on the secondary ticket market.

“It’s a Game 7, right? It’s for everything,” said Eichel, who had eight shot attempts and an assist in the loss while operating as one of Team USA’s most effective players in his home city. “I think you’re going to see desperate hockey and you’re going to see everything you saw in the first game, and even more.

“It will be great. We’re looking forward. We know we’re going to need to bring our best. They’re going to be better, and we know that. We’ll be better as well. We’ve got two days here, we’ll take advantage of the time to get guys healthy and get them ready for Thursday.”

Will Team USA need reinforcements and a few forward bodies as contingencies in case some of their players can’t go? Do the Americans have a chance of beating the explosive, lethal Canadian group if bruising identity players like the Tkachuk Brothers and McAvoy aren’t going to be in the lineup?

These are legit questions that Team USA is going to face in the next couple of days as they prepare for a sure-to-be epic 4 Nations trophy game at TD Garden that has everybody in the hockey world buzzing with anticipation ahead of it.