When you score an overtime winner, you meet with the media after. That's just a given. Everyone wants to hear from the hero, obviously.
It wasn't quite a given Tuesday night at TD Garden, though, because the overtime hero also needed to meet with a dentist.
Charlie McAvoy did ultimately speak to reporters after lifting the Boston Bruins to a 2-1 win over the Los Angeles Kings, but he only took two questions. Given the way McAvoy looked, that was completely understandable.
McAvoy's mouth was still bleeding a bit as he faced the cameras and microphones. It was clear that he had lost, or at least chipped, a few more teeth – on top of all the teeth he was already missing as a result of the slap shot that broke his jaw back in November.
This time, it was a hit from behind that caused the damage, when big, 6-foot-6 Samuel Helenius knocked McAvoy face-first into the glass with 6:35 remaining in the second period. As Nikita Zadorov came to his defense and dropped the gloves with Helenius, McAvoy made a beeline for the locker room with a towel to his face.
He missed the rest of the second period, but returned for the third. That was good news for the Bruins, because the game wound up going to overtime tied 1-1. McAvoy started the 3-on-3 extra session with David Pastrnak and Mark Kastelic, and wound up scoring 39 seconds in. Kastelic sent a long pass up to Pastrnak, who then led McAvoy in alone for a nifty backhand finish. Fittingly, McAvoy pressed his face right up against the glass again, this time in celebration.
"I wish the hits would stop coming, honestly," McAvoy said during his brief postgame media scrum. "Just, it's tiring. My mouth honestly can't even feel worse, but I'll get some work. We got a really good dentist here who's great.
"I'm just really happy we got two points tonight, honestly. I didn't feel great or have my stuff tonight, and just to see it go in at the end, I kind of feel like all is forgiven. I just need to get some rest, and I'll be be better on Thursday, and we just keep this thing going."
McAvoy may not feel like he played his best on Tuesday, but he has undoubtedly been playing some great hockey for a while now, especially when it comes to offensive contributions. He now has 46 points (7g, 39a) in 52 games this season, the best points-per-game average of his career and now just 10 points away from his career high with 18 games to go. His 0.88 points per game rank ninth among all defensemen this season. Since Dec. 31, McAvoy is over a point per game with 27 points in 24 games.
That's one way he's leading, by producing on the ice. The toughness that he's displayed is another.
"The guy next to him," Bruins coach Marco Sturm said, "he's gonna look over, 'Is he going to battle through it or not?' If you sit across from him, and if you're a young guy, to see that, you know, I don't want to be the guy who's going to quit. So, those are the guys you need in the locker room, and he's a good example. And we have some other guys too. They're a great example for our young guys. We always talk about the Chara, the Bergeron, and these guys, they set the tone. And I think Charlie took over, and he's just passing along, and that's what we do. I think it's very important."
Sturm says he has seen both McAvoy and Pastrnak grow as leaders this season, and that the way they lead and the way they work together is why it hasn't mattered that the team doesn't have anyone wearing the 'C.'
"I've seen growth in his leadership, the way he started and the way we are right now," Sturm said. "We never had no captain here, so it was a little bit of different situations, but the guys handled it really well, and they still do. These guys like Charlie, David too, those guys took over, and they're still growing."