Updates on Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy have been few and far between since he took a shot to the face in last weekend’s win over Montreal.

Part of that is the process itself. On Monday, McAvoy was still meeting with doctors and assessing their options. And on Tuesday, Bruins head coach Marco Sturm said that the team would send out an update later that day, or perhaps on Wednesday. The team did not send out an update themselves, but Sturm provided one ahead of Wednesday’s 4-3 loss to the Ducks.

“Charlie had facial surgery,” Sturm said in his pregame media availability. “Successfully, so he’s doing good. He’s recovering right now at home, and we still don’t know how long he’s going to be out.” 

Based on Sturm’s wording, as well as the replays of the incident itself, it is believed that McAvoy suffered a broken jaw on the play.

If it’s a broken jaw that has sidelined McAvoy, his absence all depends on the severity of the injury and the surgery. Last season, the Blue Jackets’ Kirill Marchenko beat the odds when he broke his jaw and missed just three games before rejoining the Columbus lineup. Overall, Marchenko’s absence lasted just three weeks, and was likely aided by the 4 Nations Face-Off break. During the 2023-24 season, the Blackhawks’ Connor Bedard broke his jaw and ultimately missed just over a month of hockey for Chicago, with 14 games missed.

Typically, a broken jaw comes with a timeline of six to eight weeks.

The McAvoy incident, which came off a Noah Dobson shot that appeared to hit the Bruins’ Mark Kastelic before walloping McAvoy in the mouth, is also scary-similar to the broken jaw sustained by the Penguins’ Sidney Crosby in 2013.

Hit in the mouth by a Brooks Orpik shot, Crosby would go on to miss the final 12 games of the regular season and one playoff game before returning to Pittsburgh’s lineup. Upon his return, Crosby wore a protective shield on his face for the first two rounds of the playoffs, but ultimately ditched it by the time the Penguins played the Bruins in the Eastern Conference Finals.

With McAvoy down, the Bruins have thrown Henri Jokiharju back in the lineup, and kept the lefty-shooting Jonathan Aspirot on the right side. On Wednesday, the Bruins tinkered with their pairings, putting Aspirot opposite Nikita Zadorov on Boston’s top pairing, while Jokiharju (five giveaways in Monday’s loss) dropped down to the second pairing opposite Hampus Lindholm.

“Charlie put a little wrinkle in that whole process,” Sturm said of the defensive shake-up prior to the loss in Anaheim. “Other guys have to step up. That’s the bottom line. It can’t be Zadorov and Lindholm all the time.” 

The Bruins are 0-2-0 without McAvoy this season, and have a 15-20-7 record without McAvoy in their lineup since the start of the 2023-24 season.