Charlie McAvoy was suspended six games without pay on Tuesday for slashing Buffalo’s Zach Benson in the waning minutes of Game 6 of the teams’ first-round Eastern Conference playoff series on May 1 at TD Garden. The ban starts next season.
The NHL’s Department of Player Safety said McAvoy’s two-handed chop was “an intentional and forceful strike delivered to an opponent’s body specifically for the purpose of retribution.” Benson had just taken McAvoy down near the rear boards with a slew-foot, and the play ended with McAvoy receiving a five-minute slashing major and a 10-minute game misconduct. Benson was assessed a two-minute penalty for tripping.
The suspension puts McAvoy back in the league’s crosshairs as a repeat offender. He previously served a one-game ban in 2019 for an illegal check to the head of Josh Anderson in a playoff game against Columbus, then drew a four-game suspension in 2023 for an illegal check to the head of Florida’s Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
McAvoy said on May 3 that he was not going to comment on the incident until he had spoken with the Department of Player Safety. “I guess really after [the game], I didn’t give it too much thought at all, to be honest. Just really more caught up in the end of the season and losing. So that really was where my focus was,” he said. He added that, out of respect for the process, he would not comment further until he had the chance to speak with the department.
He can appeal the suspension to commissioner Gary Bettman within 48 hours. If Bettman does not reduce the ban, McAvoy can take the case to a neutral arbitrator. The Bruins were eliminated in the first round after the Game 6 loss, and the suspension now hangs over the start of next season for a player whose year was interrupted by injury but still ended with career highs of 50 assists and 61 points.
McAvoy missed 11 games after breaking his jaw and losing four teeth on a slap shot to the face in Montreal, and he said he lost nearly 20 pounds. He also took an elbow to the face from Florida’s Sandis Vilmanis in February, a puck to the mouth in Nashville in March and a hit from Los Angeles’s Samuel Helenius later that month. Even after that run of blows, he served as an alternate captain for the US Olympic team that beat Canada to win gold. Tuesday’s ruling now adds another chapter to a disciplinary record the league says it cannot ignore.
The department’s message was blunt: players are not excused from illegal acts just because an opponent fouled them first. In McAvoy’s case, the retaliation was judged to be the offense that mattered most, and the league answered it with a suspension that will follow him into next season.
