{"id":464636,"date":"2026-02-20T15:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/464636\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T15:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:54:13","slug":"charlie-mcavoys-olympic-diary-on-u-s-womens-gold-and-preparing-to-face-slovakia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/464636\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie McAvoy\u2019s Olympic diary: On U.S. women\u2019s gold and preparing to face Slovakia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage of Canada vs. Finland<\/a> and USA vs. Slovakia<\/a> in the 2026 Winter Olympics<\/a> men\u2019s hockey semifinals.<\/p>\n

Throughout the Winter Olympics, Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy is giving readers of\u00a0The Athletic\u00a0an inside look at Team USA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At 28 years old, McAvoy, a former Boston University standout and three-time gold medalist in international tournaments, is in his ninth full NHL season. The top-pair defenseman to the right of Quinn Hughes is one of Auston Matthews\u2019 two alternate captains at the Olympics, with Matthew Tkachuk the other. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s his fourth diary entry, edited for clarity and length, as told to\u00a0senior\u00a0writer Michael Russo. His first can be found here<\/a>, his second can be found here<\/a> and his third can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

MILAN \u2014 Last night was so inspiring, for our country and for our team that also aspires to win gold.<\/p>\n

It was really fun to watch our women\u2019s team playing such an incredible game<\/a> against a great Canada team, win in the fashion they did and then have gold medals put around their neck with the national anthem playing.<\/p>\n

We were at dinner, a bunch of guys on the team, and we had it on the phones, and then we got back to the Olympic Village and we all went to our team space on the third floor. When Megan Keller scored that sensational goal, there were a lot of jumps, a lot of happy yells and a lot of goosebumps the way it ended. It was just awesome. It was a really great hockey game. They had an amazing tournament. And that was the finish they deserved. But they had to earn it, which was incredible. I\u2019m just so happy for them.<\/p>\n

I know five of those girls through my sister, Heather. They all played at Bishop Kearney Selects together \u2014 Ava McNaughton, Haley Winn, Kirsten Simms, Caroline Harvey and Laila Edwards. And then their assistant coach, Brent Hill. They all played there, and now they\u2019re Olympic gold medalists. I know Ava, Haley and Kirsten through my sister, but I really know Caroline and Laila. I\u2019ve talked to Caroline a lot at the Village, and she\u2019s going to be one of the best women\u2019s hockey players, maybe ever. And Laila, I feel like I\u2019ve seen her everywhere in the Village and in these Olympics. She\u2019s a superstar. Those two are so great and I love talking shop with them since I\u2019m a defenseman. But my sister just graduated from Saint Anselm last year and she always talks about how amazing they were as players, but also all great people, so I\u2019m so proud of them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s inspiring to us. We want to get to where they got to.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been for real since the moment we got here. But this next one tonight against Slovakia? You know what you\u2019re playing for now: a chance to go to the gold medal game. But I think last game, just kind of reflecting on that, that\u2019s a Sweden team that could win this tournament. They have the goaltending, they have the defensemen, they have the forwards, the marquee names. They just have everything there.<\/p>\n

So to get that game in the quarterfinals, whether you want to call it a tough draw or whatever it is, I think it just prepared us better. I think we\u2019ve gone through what I was thinking was a gold-medal-quality game. That\u2019s what you could have seen in a gold medal game. I think if you flip the title of that game, no one would be surprised. So I think we\u2019re just better prepared now. I think we\u2019re battle-tested, and I think it\u2019ll help us moving forward.<\/p>\n

We just had a really good morning skate; now I\u2019m going to catch the bus. We\u2019re going to get out of here and get to the USA Winter House. That\u2019s where our pregame meal is, so we\u2019ll eat, then we\u2019ll get back to the Village, touch base with family, kind of kill a little bit of time and then I\u2019ll try to get in a nice, long nap.<\/p>\n

These 9 o\u2019clock games make for long days. But at least we understand the schedule now.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t wait for that nap, though. I\u2019ll tell you one thing I brought to Milan that I couldn\u2019t live without: my pillow and blanket.<\/p>\n

I brought my own pillow from home, and then my wife packed me a blanket. I haven\u2019t slept on anything else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of Canada vs. Finland and USA vs. Slovakia in the 2026 Winter Olympics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,5,54125,4,2602],"class_list":{"0":"post-464636","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-mens-olympic-ice-hockey","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-olympics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116103772185978681","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}