What Charlie McAvoy said about Bruins’ vacant captaincy role

The Boston Bruins, as at present constituted, are with no captain getting into the 2025-26 season.

The final participant to don the “C” on a black-and-gold sweater was Brad Marchand — who was traded to Florida in March, gained a Cup with the Panthers, and then re-upped with Boston’s rival on a six-year contract extension weeks later. 

Because the Bruins try and pen a brand new chapter and retool round a brand new core grouping transferring ahead, most eyes look to Charlie McAvoy and David Pastrnak as the following wave of crew management.

Past Pastrnak and McAvoy’s standing as two of the highest gamers within the NHL, each skaters have additionally established themselves as alternate captains with Boston over the previous couple of seasons. 

However because the Bruins mull their choices with regards to establishing a brand new management hierarchy transferring ahead, McAvoy harassed in an interview with the Boston Herald’s Steve Conroy that there isn’t any rush to call a captain for subsequent season. 

Quite, the Bruins defenseman believes that the franchise might be in good palms with each him and Pastrnak working collectively to assist lead Boston again to the playoffs. 

“Going into this 12 months, we’re each going to have A’s. That’s what I do know,” McAvoy advised Conroy. “I don’t suppose there’s any fireplace underneath them to do something with that [captaincy role]. And guess what? That’s completely fantastic.”

“And no matter letters, we all know that that is our crew, me and him. And for nevertheless a few years we get to be right here, it’s going to be us two, together with a number of different guys, proper,” McAvoy added. “However that is our child now, me and him, and there’s no person else that I’d moderately do it with and I do know we’re going to make one another higher, on and off the ice.”

Whereas McAvoy spent the ultimate months of the 2024-25 season on the mend as a result of a shoulder damage and an infection, Pastrnak served as Boston’s high chief over a painful last stretch of the 12 months. 

However even with Pastrnak taking a extra vocal function in Boston’s dressing room whereas nonetheless stuffing the stat sheet (43 targets, 106 factors over 82 video games), the Bruins’ star winger additionally harassed this spring that he isn’t specializing in titles such because the captaincy transferring ahead. 

“The leaders I had round me, it was by no means about who wears the ‘C’ or who wears the ‘A’. Everyone within the room is equal right here and we have to make it possible for that’s one of many issues that we now have to [find] — a gaggle that’s prepared to place the work in,” Pastrnak said in the course of the crew’s break-up day in April. “It’s not about one man. 

“It’s going to be a number of of us and we have to be working collectively, and it doesn’t matter who’s going to finish up carrying any letter, nevertheless it begins with a gaggle. Everyone’s equal right here regardless of should you’re younger, older, and that’s what it’s all the time been like, and we now have to maintain it going.”

 

Conor Ryan is a employees author protecting the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Crimson Sox for Boston.com, a task he has held since 2023.