The fever pitch ending to the 4 Nations Face-Off championship game lived up to the hype as things went to overtime before Connor McDavid decided it with a sniper shot from the high slot at TD Garden.
The trophy celebration and awarding of medals to each of the Team Canada players went well into the wee hours of the morning with Boston Bruins team captain Brad Marchand celebrating another international accolade wearing the maple leaf.
💯 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/dUUC0ffTF1
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) February 21, 2025
“It’s tough to put into words, but there is so much pride,” said Marchand. “So much gratitude to be here and to be on top…it was an incredible tournament and one I was very grateful to be a part of.
“I have a lot of great memories in this building and a lot of incredible memories in this city. This is another one to add to the list.”
The tournament lived up to the hype and gave NHL fans something compelling to watch during an NHL All-Star break that customarily serves up the worst hockey content of the entire regular season. There may be tweaks and there will certainly be a constant level of anxiety involved with a midseason tournament of this type given how hard all the players were competing for national pride, but the 4 Nations was a home run in virtually every imaginable category aside from the injury issues.
Ah yes, the injury issues.
It leaves us to discuss the Charlie McAvoy situation with the Boston Bruins after he was hospitalized with an infection in his right shoulder from an injury suffered in the Team USA win over Finland at the beginning of the tournament. McAvoy showed up to Thursday night’s championship game at the Garden with his right arm in a sling and read the starting lineup to the American group before they took the ice against Canada.
Charlie McAvoy reading the starting lineup for Team USA tonight with his right arm in a sling pic.twitter.com/zirUvOwZ96
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) February 21, 2025
It was an emotional moment for McAvoy and for his Team USA teammates, but it wasn’t enough in the end to push them over the top.
Unfortunately, the “significant AC joint injury” to McAvoy’s shoulder also leaves the Black and Gold with a big problem headed into the final 25-game stretch run at the end of the regular season as well. Clearly Bruins management is unhappy with the way McAvoy’s injury was handled by the Team USA medical staff that’s essentially the medical personnel for the Minnesota Wild, a group that Bruins doctors have had differences of opinion with recently after Pat Maroon’s back surgery situation was a bone of contention at least season’s NHL trade deadline.
The Wild doctors had Maroon ready to play soon after being traded to Boston and the Bruins' medical people had him sitting out until close to the end of the regular season, a pretty drastic differently in injury recovery and treatment.
It feels like McAvoy, or the Bruins, were not made aware of the seriousness of the defenseman’s shoulder injury and the subsequent infection raises questions about how care was being administered.
Interesting stuff from @FriedgeHNIC I was initially puzzled how an infection could have developed with Charlie McAvoy from a shoulder injury, but it stemming from a painkilling shot makes perfect sense https://t.co/uuKZ0FA6mb
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) February 20, 2025
"I think the people who are the angriest is the team, the Bruins, said Hockey Night in Canada host Elliotte Friedman in a radio hit in Toronto a couple of days ago. "If you read their statement today, they make it very clear that they are unhappy with how this all went down, that they don't feel that their player was given the proper treatment. It seems now that McAvoy was originally injured in the opener against Finland. There's a play where Joel Armia takes him hard into the post.
"And it sounds like -- I don't know if he got a shot or something. I don't know exactly what happened, but he played Saturday, it looks like, with much more severe an injury than he was initially led to believe, and everybody was initially led to believe, which makes his performance all that more impressive. So, from what I understand, on Monday he was in a bit more pain, and was admitted to the hospital, and they realized the injury was more severe than believed or initially diagnosed. And number two, there was an infection there that had to be operated on and removed. So, I don't know if he was given a needle or shot or something like that, and it got infected, but it was something along these lines. I remember yesterday when it was the Bruins and not Team USA that announced that McAvoy was out, there were people saying, 'How come the Bruins, whose GM is the GM of Team Canada, are announcing that Charlie McAvoy wouldn't play?' And then it became pretty clear that it's because the Bruins were extremely unhappy with the way this had been handled, and that they felt that in this particular case, McAvoy didn't get the proper care."
This sounds like something that is going to further hard feelings between the Bruins and USA Hockey, and perhaps even Team USA GM Bill Guerin and the Minnesota Wild while opening up serious discussions about whether a 4 Nations tournament is worth doing in the middle of the season given considerable injury risk.
But the real question for the Black and Gold, at this point, is whether or not this McAvoy injury turns them into out-and-out sellers at the trade deadline.
The B’s enter the stretch run outside of the Eastern Conference playoff structure, but they’re just a single point out of a wild card spot with all the teams around them holding games in hand against the Black and Gold. Essentially there are five teams (Senators, Red Wings, Blue Jackets, Rangers and the Bruins) vying for two spots, and the Bruins are going to need to hop over Ottawa and Detroit to make it happen.
McAvoy is out “week-to-week” with the shoulder injury just as they are getting Hampus Lindholm back online after being out since November with a leg injury. This development is the latest body blow to hit the Bruins in a season where a constant flurry of brush fires has consistently derailed them.
“It’s just a shame, it’s a shame,” said Charlie Coyle. "[McAvoy] is such a gamer, the way he plays, he plays hard…he was a man possessed playing those games. It was so fun to watch. It fired me up watching and seeing that through the TV. I feel for him. You know how badly he wants to play and contribute and be a part of that Finals and that last game. He’s been a big part of it, been a huge part of it, the way he’s played those last couple.
“You hate to see that, you want guys to be healthy. Both teams want to be healthy because they want to win against the best and have the full team out there. On the other hand, too, you want to make sure Charlie’s good so we can have him back and playing and playing good hockey, healthy hockey for us too.”
First, it was Jeremy Swayman’s training camp holdout and his predictable, subsequent struggles. Then it was a 20-game nosedive to start the NHL season that got Jim Montgomery fired. The Bruins stabilized under Joe Sacco, but then lost Lindholm to a significant injury and have ridden a roller coaster of inconsistency for most of the season where road struggles, special teams woes and trouble scoring have led them to a truly horrendous minus-25 goal differential this season.
That stat all by itself really raises into question whether the Bruins were playoff material with McAvoy, and makes it painfully clear they are not postseason-worthy without him. They will get a handful of chances to prove it coming out of the 4 Nations break, of course, but this humble hockey writer sees no choice but for Bruins management to choose the retooling path at the trade deadline for the first time under Don Sweeney’s leadership.
It may mean trading Trent Frederic or Justin Brazeau ahead of unrestricted free agency, or even moving a core piece of the roster like Brandon Carlo or Charlie Coyle if the return was good enough.
But it feels like the McAvoy injury saga will be the final nail in this B’s team’s coffin when we review this laborious 2024-25 for the Boston Bruins after it is all over.