- Charlie McAvoy won’t make his season debut until Oct. 13 against the Sharks
- Ridly Greig has his own return date, back Oct. 6 at Detroit
- Read below for where Connor Hellebuyck’s suspension stands in Winnipeg
Charlie McAvoy won’t play his first game of the 2026-27 season until Oct. 13.
The Bruins star is one of three players still working through a suspension less than a week before opening night, according to a breakdown from NHL Rosters:
McAvoy is serving the six games the NHL’s Department of Player Safety gave him for slashing Buffalo’s Zach Benson during last spring’s playoffs. That penalty rolled over into the new season and won’t clear until Boston’s game in San Jose.
Watch the league’s official explanation from back in May:
It was the third suspension of McAvoy’s career and the longest. He’s been able to skate in Boston’s preseason games to stay sharp, and the Bruins are already under pressure after winning just one playoff round across their last five seasons.
Circle Jan. 5 on the calendar too.
That’s when Boston hosts Buffalo for the first time since McAvoy’s slash on Benson set this whole thing off. Gino Hard has the full breakdown of how that punishment came down.
Ridly Greig is working through a suspension of his own in Ottawa.
He’s serving the final two games of the ban he picked up for sucker-punching Carolina’s Sean Walker during Ottawa’s Game 4 elimination loss last spring, and he returns Oct. 6 on the road against Detroit.
Ottawa gets a crack at the Hurricanes again on Nov. 28, its first meeting with Carolina since the Walker incident.
Then there’s a suspension that has nothing to do with what happened on the ice.
Connor Hellebuyck still hasn’t reported to Winnipeg’s training camp while he waits out his trade request, and the Jets have suspended him indefinitely because of it. He won’t get paid, and his $8.5 million cap hit won’t count against Winnipeg’s books as long as it stands. Gino Hard has been tracking the trade rumors as they’ve picked up.
Winnipeg brought in Stuart Skinner as insurance over the summer, and he’s already delivering. Skinner stopped 31 of 32 shots in a preseason win over Colorado this week. There’s no timetable for when, or if, Hellebuyck plays for the Jets again.
