Charlie McAvoy knew it wasn’t good, as did everyone watching.
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“Yeah, I knew. I knew we were in trouble there,” McAvoy said Friday. “I had never taken one before, but you don't take a slap shot to the jaw… I knew right away I was in some trouble.”
He was, and now we finally know what the damage from that slap shot to the face in Montreal ended up being.
“We had just a linear fracture right here,” McAvoy told reporters, pointing to a scar below the left side of his mouth, “all the way down and some displacement, and lost a lot of teeth on my bottom.”
He didn’t feel the need to elaborate any further than that.
“I'll save you the visual. Take my word for it.”
McAvoy suffered the injury on Nov. 15 and underwent surgery a few days later. One of the biggest challenges since then has been nutrition. McAvoy said he would be unable to eat solid food for six weeks from the date of surgery, meaning he is only about halfway through that timetable right now.
The good news is that McAvoy is back skating with his teammates now, taking part in Thursday’s morning skate and Friday’s practice at Warrior Ice Arena. That has been a welcome sight for Bruins players and coaches, but probably an even more welcome development for McAvoy himself.
“It's great to be around the guys,” McAvoy said. “Just to be back, and the rhythm a little bit. It's nice to see them. That helps me equally, the same way. I'm happy to hear it helps them. I take a lot of positivity from this group, and so many great guys here that are encouraging me on this way back.”
The bad news is that, because he can’t consume a normal diet right now, McAvoy has lost nearly 20 pounds since the injury. Soup and ice cream have been good, but some of his attempts at blending up solid food have not gone so well.
“If you're blending up solid food, it's not enjoyable,” he said. “I tried chicken and vegetable, and that was just a non-starter. 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.”
McAvoy knows he’ll have to put weight back on before returning to game action, though, so that is one of the challenges he’ll be working through with Bruins staff. There are other boxes that still need to be checked before he’s cleared to return, too.
“We'll see. There's steps that we gotta cross,” McAvoy said. “Obviously, getting weight on, getting energy, feeling good is the biggest thing. You don’t want to be out there and feeling like you're gonna pass out. So, there's that, there's getting cleared by the doctor, there's X-rays, there's certain check marks that we have to get by before we can get back in a game.”
The Bruins have gone 4-5-0 since McAvoy went down, and they could certainly use him back in the lineup as soon as possible. But there is obviously a bigger picture at play here, and coach Marco Sturm made it clear that McAvoy isn’t going to play until he gets all the clearances that he needs.
“We have a good staff here who's gonna try to do their best on their behalf to get everything he needs, all the fluids and carbs, whatever, to get him back on track,” Sturm said. “I can tell on the ice he definitely, he looks like a skinny guy out there. … That's why we have to be patient, too, with him. We do not want to rush him to come back. We just want to make sure he's 100 percent mentally, physically. His weight has to be at the right spot, because otherwise it will be not favorable to him.”