McAvoy growing into complete leader for Bruins

BOSTON -- One minute and 52 seconds into the video, in which Boston Bruins teammates congratulate Patrice Bergeron on his retirement, Charlie McAvoy appears. He looks straight into the camera and delivers his message.

“What you’ve built here is special,” McAvoy said, breaking into a grin. “I promise I’ll do everything I can to take good care of it.”

From the second McAvoy took the ice for the Bruins in his first NHL game, on April 12, 2017, in an Eastern Conference First Round game against the Ottawa Senators, the defenseman has embraced the Bruins and embraced Boston, where he also went to college. He has imbued himself in the team’s culture, leaving far behind the days when, as a 16-year-old New York Rangers fan, he was inspired to tweet, “I hate the Bruins so much.”

No longer. McAvoy has become one of the faces and leaders of the Bruins, one of the players poised to bridge the gap from the old guard and bring the franchise into the future.

“It was an emotional, emotional time,” McAvoy said later. “You realize what he’s doing and what you’ve had, what he’s built, what I feel as though I’ve helped to contribute to, to build and make better. And just how special he was.

“I was just speaking from the heart. I want it to always feel that special, as special as it is.”

When Bergeron retired, there was much speculation about who might succeed him, whether the team would hand the captain’s “C” to Brad Marchand for his loyalty and his years of service, for his maturation and the legacy of the 2011 Stanley Cup, for his preeminent play on the wing -- or whether the team might jump into future, giving that “C” to McAvoy, as a harbinger of the next generation.

Ultimately, Marchand became the 27th captain in Bruins history, succeeding Zdeno Chara and Bergeron, who had combined to hold the captaincy for the past 17 seasons.

But McAvoy remains part of the leadership core, an alternate captain alongside David Pastrnak, part of a group which has taken the Bruins to a 14-1-3 start to the season after a 3-1 win against the Florida Panthers at Amerant Bank Arena on Wednesday.

“We talk about leadership, it’s something you can’t really force,” Bruins president Cam Neely said. “You can’t hope that someone’s going to be a leader because maybe they’re one of your better players. Someone has to kind of come up and emerge and show you that they want to be a leader but show you because of what they’re doing both on and off the ice.

“And Charlie is certainly doing that.”

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David Quinn could see it as far back as college, when McAvoy arrived at Boston University as a baby-faced defenseman with cheeks that made scouts question his fitness.

“He just really had all of those characteristics,” said Quinn, now the coach of the San Jose Sharks, who coached McAvoy for two years at BU and remains close with the defenseman. “You look at the ideal NHL captain, it’s usually one of your best players, if not your best player. And it’s someone who commands a locker room, who has the ability to be honest with teammates in a way that’s respectful and accepting and he had that.”

Immediately.

“Honestly, kind of right away,” said defenseman Matt Grzelcyk, who first met McAvoy in 2015-16 when Grzelcyk was a senior and captain at BU. “I think he was 17 when he came in as a freshman and he just kind of oozes confidence. Not in any way cocky, just wanting to do anything for the team, not afraid to speak his mind when the time is right.

“Just from the first few practices when he stepped on the ice, just to see that he wants the puck, he wants to make a play.”

Which is not to say that McAvoy was the most talkative in the dressing room, that he joined either the Terriers or the Bruins ready to take over. It has been a steady climb as he learned and listened, as he did the dirty work and earned respect, as he spoke up more frequently, alongside others on the team, like Marchand, like Pastrnak, like Brandon Carlo and Charlie Coyle.

But ever since he arrived on the scene at 17, it has been clear where he is headed.

It was there at the 2017 IIHF World Junior Championship where McAvoy helped the United States to the gold medal against Canada at a tournament held in Montreal and Toronto. It was there in his NHL debut, in those 2017 playoffs.

It was there before that, in a trip to Notre Dame late in McAvoy’s freshman season, and about which Quinn recalled: “It was a man’s weekend and there was no bigger man than Charlie that weekend, not only on the ice but away from the rink. You could hear him in the locker room. That was the eye-opener for me.”

It has been there all along.

“People are drawn to him. He puts everything into it,” Quinn said. “It’s getting a little bit harder to find that player that does it all, who’s got the high-end, world-class talent. He’s got the world-class personality that can galvanize a locker room and he’s got the world-class leadership ability. That’s Charlie.”

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When Neely spoke about McAvoy’s leadership and potential before the season, comparing him to franchise icon Ray Bourque, the one area in which he said McAvoy was lagging was on offense, with his shot. It was a place in which McAvoy -- and coach Jim Montgomery -- had hoped he might improve this season.

So far, McAvoy has delivered.

With 13 points (three goals, 10 assists) in 14 games, McAvoy is scoring at the highest rate of his NHL career. His top offensive totals came in 2021-22 when he had 56 points (10 goals, 46 assists) in 78 games in 2021-22, and scored double-digit goals for the only time in his seven NHL seasons.

“I think offensively he’s at the best level that I’ve seen him at,” Montgomery said.

To get here, Montgomery made sure McAvoy knew how important a shot-first mindset was, showing him the opportunities where he could have put the puck on net but didn’t. That push seems to have taken hold.

“That confidence is starting to really show on the offensive side,” Montgomery said. “I think on the defensive side it’s always been there. He knows that he can shut people down and he relishes that, but I think like that slap shot [against the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday] and a couple of the other shots, that’s him wanting to take shots now. Before I think he was looking to defer. I think now he has that balance of knowing when to pass, when to shoot.”

A reporter recently asked Montgomery if an apt comparison for McAvoy was Drew Doughty, the Los Angeles Kings defenseman who has been known to raise his game in the biggest of situations, winning the Stanley Cup twice and in 2016 winning the Norris Trophy as the best defenseman in the NHL.

Montgomery agreed.

Despite being interrupted by a four-game suspension -- assessed for an illegal check to the head of Florida Panthers defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson on Oct. 30 -- McAvoy has points in each of his last seven games, with 10 points (three goals, seven assists) in that span.

And it’s that production, that new focus on his shot, that may get him over the hump and into the Norris conversation, where his highest finish was fourth, in 2021-22, after a fifth-place finish the season before.

“I’m trying to be a shooting threat,” McAvoy said. “Every year you want this game to come a little bit easier to you. That doesn’t mean you’re working less. It means you’re working harder, but you’d like to see the experience that you’ve had in this League pay off.”

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Even McAvoy can’t believe he’s in his seventh season in the NHL. Still just 25 years old and signed for six more seasons after this one on an eight-year contract worth $76 million ($9.5 million average annual value), his influence and importance should continue to rise.

Marchand, though he remains one of the top players in the NHL, is 35. He has one more year remaining on his contract after 2023-24. Beyond that, it’s impossible to know at this point.

But McAvoy will be there.

“You have got to continue to integrate younger players that are capable of being leaders both on and off the ice and as an extension of what was previously in place,” Bruins general manager Don Sweeney said. “It’s been an awfully long history and rich history of players of that nature.

“You’re always trying to find the next ones that can be part of that. It’s what keeps you up at night. … The next wave have to continue to learn under the previous regime.”

Over his first six seasons in the NHL, McAvoy was able to study at the feet of Chara, his defense partner, and at the feet of Bergeron. The two make up a leadership group that Quinn calls “unmatched in the last 20 years in the NHL.”

It took the pressure off, allowing McAvoy and the other young players to sit back, to absorb before taking that on themselves. And while that has been a boon to the Bruins, to their young players, to McAvoy, it is also a heavy burden.

“I think what attracts most people to play for the Bruins is the locker room, the character and the tradition that’s here,” Grzelcyk said. “It’s a little bit of pressure to want to keep that going. We’ve had some unbelievable leaders, the last few years I think especially. You want to be part of the solution to add to it, to keep that tradition going.”

Marchand remains the holdover, the Stanley Cup-winning player who is bridging the gap as the rest of that team -- Bergeron, Chara, David Krejci, Tuukka Rask -- has fallen into retirement. Those who are left, especially those with term, are McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm and Carlo, Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha and Coyle.

“It is absolutely a passing of the torch,” McAvoy said. “’Marchy’ is the only one here that’s won. Everybody else that was here that’s won, that’s part of that 2011 [team], is gone now. Now it’s on me, it’s on ‘Pasta,’ it’s ‘Lindy,’ it’s ‘Brando.’ It’s guys that have been here. It’ll be [Jeremy Swayman] and [Linus Ullmark]. What do we want our legacy to be? And what are we doing every day to build it?”

It’s something that he thinks about, that is on his mind. Before, he and his teammates could let their elders lead, understanding that they’d been there before. That helped the team get to the Stanley Cup Final in 2019, to Game 7, which they dropped at home to the St. Louis Blues.

Not anymore.

“This next turn of the page here, this next chapter in Bruins history is going to be written by us,” McAvoy said. “We have something to prove.”

And so, for McAvoy, that vow lingers.

I promise I’ll do everything I can to take good care of it.

“It’s on us now,” McAvoy said. “What do we want our legacy to be? What do we want to leave for the people that come after us?”