Charlie McAvoy is escorted down the tunnel as the Bruins' night unravels against the Wild

Charlie McAvoy was tossed from the Bruins' 6-2 loss to the Wild tonight after dropping the gloves with Bobby Brink in the third period.

With Boston already down 6-2, the frustration finally spilled over. It's the kind of ending a night like this was heading toward.

Jack Studley described the sequence: McAvoy and Brink dropped the gloves, Connor Clifton got in the way, Brink ended up on the ground, and McAvoy was escorted right down the tunnel.

Michael Russo added the buildup. Clifton slashed and hit Brink hard during the shift, and when McAvoy and Brink squared off, Clifton jumped in as a third man.

Gino Hard wrote that Danila Yurov and Brink were both nailed along the boards before Brink dropped the gloves. Dylan Loucks saw it from a different angle: McAvoy caught Brink up high, Brink wasn't happy and came in to fight, and McAvoy won the fight but was tossed.

The refs huddled afterward, and the penalties piled up. Russo reports Minnesota got a 5-on-3, with Brink taking two minutes for roughing and McAvoy four for roughing.

Nikita Zadorov also went to the box for holding and tripping, then picked up a 10-minute misconduct. That handed the Wild a four-minute power play.

What McAvoy's ejection means for the Bruins against the Kings

You can understand the frustration. McAvoy has been dealing with a blue line that has struggled to produce, which Charlie McAvoy's scoring problem on the Bruins blue line laid out on Friday. But a team down four in the third needs its best defenseman on the bench, not in the tunnel.

Whether the league takes a further look at the fight hasn't been reported, so there is nothing to say on that yet.

Boston has now lost two straight by a combined 11-4, following Thursday's 5-2 loss to Montreal. The only real spark all night was Tanner Jeannot's earlier fight with Marcus Foligno, and that came well before the game got away.

The Bruins now have a few days to sort through it. They host the Kings on Tuesday, and Marco Sturm will have to decide how he wants to handle a locker room that spent the third period losing its composure.

This article was written with the help of artificial intelligence, based on public reports and official sources.