Boston Bruins
“I’ll save you the visual. Just take my word for it.”
As soon as Charlie McAvoy saw a slap shot sailing towards him at Bell Centre, he expected the worst.
“I knew we were in trouble there,” McAvoy said Friday at Warrior Ice Arena. “I’d never taken one before, but you don’t take a slap shot to the jaw —I knew right away I was in some trouble.”
The damage doled out by Noah Dobson’s blast was evident right away. As soon as the puck struck McAvoy square in the jaw, several of his teeth landed on the frozen sheet.
By the time McAvoy made it off the ice with head athletic trainer Dustin Stuck, fellow Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov was busy trying to locate his teeth amid the pool of blood on the ice.
The final diagnosis for McAvoy? A linear fracture and displacement in his jaw, to go along with several missing teeth.
“I’ll save you the visual. Just take my word for it,” McAvoy said of the dental damage.
McAvoy has been sidelined since Nov. 15 against Montreal, with the Bruins alternate captain working his way back after going under the knife to repair that shattered jaw.
He has missed nine games so far, with no timeline set for his return. However, McAvoy has made strides in recent days — donning a red, non-contact sweater and taking part in practices at Warrior over the past two days.
While McAvoy looks to shake off the rust, adjust to skating with a full cage, and manage the evident pain, he acknowledged that the greatest hurdle so far has been fueling his body amid a liquid-only diet.
Even though McAvoy has resorted to soups and ice cream to try and keep his weight up, he acknowledged that he dropped 20 points through the first week and a half after his injury. He will not be cleared to eat solid foods until six weeks after the time of his injury.
“It’s tough. I tried to give it a go. If you’re blending up solid food — it’s not enjoyable. … I tried chicken and vegetables and, like, that was just a non-starter,” McAvoy said. “I tried. It’s terrible. So soups have really been my go-to and smoothies to try and get protein, because food that’s blended up? It’s not meant to be eaten that way.”
Even if McAvoy stills has weeks to go before he can eat solid foods, he’s not setting that as a timeline for his potential return to the ice.
“We’ll see. There’s steps that we’ve got to cross,” McAvoy said of his expected return. “Obviously, getting weight on, getting energy, feeling feeling good is the biggest thin. You want to be out there and feeling like you’re not going to pass out. So there’s that. There’s getting cleared by the doctor, there’s – rays, there’s certain check marks that we have to get by before we can get back in a game.”
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