Zdeno Chara and Charlie McAvoy are at the beginning of their third season playing together. Over their time as a pair, they’ve earned the reputation of being a lockdown pair, and for good reason. For two seasons now, the top pair for the Bruins has been dependable for any situation, while also putting up great numbers and logging massive amounts of minutes.
They (Zdeno Chara and Charlie McAvoy) also became a favorite pairing of the Boston Bruins fanbase, as well as organization. Boston loves the idea of the former cornerstone defenseman of the franchise playing alongside the future one.
Apart from both guys being individually talented players, their strengths are also complementary. The lockdown play of Chara alone is a handful for offenses to deal with. Adding McAvoy adds an excellent skater who can streak through the neutral zone with the puck, taking a load off Chara as his skating declines with age. Meanwhile, as McAvoy is still learning the game, the experience and hockey knowledge of Chara helps his shortcomings.
Unfortunately, the play of Chara and McAvoy has not met expectations through seven games. It hasn’t been egregiously bad or even bad enough for most people to notice. However, a close look at the play of the Bruins top pair reveals that something is wrong with Zdeno Chara and Charlie McAvoy.
What’s been going wrong?
Before trying to understand why Chara and McAvoy have been slumping, it’s important to recognize what their “symptoms” are.
Mental Mistakes
There have been plays where this pair looks like two players in NHL 20 whose controllers disconnected. This alone is fine; players of all skill levels make their fair share of mistakes. However, the mistakes from Chara and McAvoy have been frequent and they’ve been frequently ending up in the back of the Bruins’ net.
On this goal, Chara goes for a change and McAvoy is unaware that there is no defenseman on the right side when the Stars start rushing up ice. This miscommunication leads to a man getting behind McAvoy and scoring. An uncharacteristic mistake of these guys.
This goal isn’t an egregious mistake, but it is a small mistake by McAvoy. It isn’t his fault that the Bruins turned the puck over in the defensive zone, but he could’ve gotten inside position on the man in front of the net instead of overcommitting to protect the cross-ice pass.
Chara and McAvoy lose focus and Brayden Point says, “Well, okay!” One thousand percent on these two. Egregious.
This one is simply McAvoy getting cleaned out. Killorn made him look straight up bad, which is not something you want to be seeing from your future franchise defenseman. Halak definitely should’ve controlled the rebound, but it couldn’t have helped to have to see through McAvoy flopping around like a dead fish.
Of course, it would be fair to say that only looking at their mistakes tells an incomplete story. We have to also look at the plays that they’ve been preventing. The best way to do this is to look at the numbers.
The numbers have not been great for these two.
Numbers should never be the driving reason for a piece of hockey analysis. However, given what can be seen with these two players, going to the numbers is useful. Numbers can only provide more certainty or doubt, both of which are useful. They don’t make something true or false.
In the case of Chara and McAvoy, the numbers are providing more certainty to the idea that something isn’t clicking with them. For starters, Chara’s on-ice heat map in the defensive zone is quite bad.
All those shots right around the net are not ideal. McAvoy’s heat maps aren’t quite that bad, but leave much to be desired from a top defenseman.
As for possession metrics, they are scary bad for Boston’s top pair. Chara and McAvoy are #1 and #2 respectively on the team in shot attempts against. This could be partly justified, as they take more defensive zone face offs than any other Bruins defense pair. However, when we look to the percentage of shot attempts for while this pair is on the ice, it also doesn’t look great.
Chara, who has averaged 53.7% of shot attempts for over his 22 year career, is seeing just 46.2% of attempts go the Bruins way this season. When McAvoy is on the ice, the Bruins take 49.5% of the shot attempts, down from his career average of 54.3%. The duo is also responsible for the two highest expected goals against per game on the team.
These aren’t devastatingly bad numbers, and there’s a good chance that they don’t stay this bad for long. However, when both of these guys are putting up possessional and positional numbers that are worse than both their own precedents and the rest of the team, it’s time to at least start raising some eyebrows.
What could the reason be for this decline in play?
We haven’t seen nearly enough hockey yet to be certain. Furthermore, given that one can’t be totally sure that there even is anything wrong with these two, there’s definitely no way to know what’s causing these potential problems. For now, there are a few suspected reasons that are worth noting.
Firstly and most obviously, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that Chara’s play is just declining with age. It’s bound to happen eventually and getting to age 42 alone is surpassing expectations. It’s not that simple, though. While the data suggest that Chara is playing worse than McAvoy, it’s clear that the mistakes discussed earlier have more to do with McAvoy. It’s tough to put blame on Chara when McAvoy is the one costing the Bruins goals.
On the flip side of that coin, one could point out that the mental lapses of McAvoy are costing the Bruins games. The game against Tampa was decided in a shootout. McAvoy was also on the ice for a goal in the overtime loss to Toronto. The sample size is just too small right now to definitively say that McAvoy’s mental mistakes are making Boston lose. For now, we know that McAvoy does make mistakes (it’s only his third season, believe it or not). What we don’t know is the impact of them.
A less discussed reason is that Chara and McAvoy take tons of defensive zone face offs with the struggling 4th line. Coach Bruce Cassidy has gone to this line for years as a defensive lockdown option. However, this season they have not been as dependable as in previous years. The ice time that Chara and McAvoy have had to play with a line that’s clearly slumping could be the true reason for their struggles.
As these two log some more games, we will have more answers to the unknowns. For now, just keep an eye on them.
