After far from storybook season, McKenna first overall NHL pick

Beating adversity will be asset in new life with Leafs

Gavin McKenna, centre, dons a Leafs jersey. (Photo by Natalie Shaver/CHL)

In the year leading up to being the first overall selection in the NHL Entry Draft, Gavin McKenna traveled a path no else has ever travelled.

Last Friday, McKenna was picked first overall by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the NHL Entry Draft held at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York. Pop superstar Justin Bieber, who is from London, Ontario, put on a WWE style promo in making the first overall pick for the Leafs, and in the process he drew huge amounts of loud boos from the partisan Buffalo fans adding to the entertainment spectacle of the event.

From that moment, McKenna, who is from Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, has had a love in with the Leafs organization, their fans and Toronto as a city. The honeymoon phase of McKenna’s arrival in Toronto is definitely on.

The 18-year-old left-winger ultimately ended up where he was supposed to be after navigating a 2025-26 campaign with the Penn State University Nittany Lions that contained various twists and turns. During that campaign, McKenna dealt with criticisms coming from a slow first half of the season to dealing with legal matters that came up early in the second half of the campaign.

The adversity McKenna faced might make him ready for the adversity he will eventually encounter playing in the fishbowl setting the Leafs deal with in Toronto that is unlike any other market in the NHL.

Back in June of 2025, McKenna was targeted to be the consensus first overall selection in the 2026 NHL Entry Draft. He had just come off a sensational 17-year-old season in the WHL with the Medicine Hat Tigers in 2024-25.

In 56 regular season games, McKenna, who stands 6-feet and weighs 170 pounds, piled up 129 points coming off 41 goals and 88 assists to go with a plus-60 rating in the plus-minus department. He helped the Tigers finish second overall in the WHL’s regular season standings with a 47-17-3-1 record.

McKenna proceeded to help the Tigers win their sixth WHL title in team history posting a 16-2 mark in the 2025 WHL Playoffs. He played in 16 games in the WHL Playoffs recording nine goals and 29 assists for 38 points to go with a plus-14 rating.

The Tigers proceeded to advance to the Memorial Cup tournament that crowns a CHL champion. At that year’s tournament played in Rimouski, Quebec, Medicine Hat topped the preliminary round standings with a 3-0 mark to make the event’s championship game. In the Memorial Cup title clash, the Tigers fell 4-1 to the London Knights, who are a storied powerhouse in the OHL.

In the four games the Tigers played at the Memorial Cup tournament, McKenna had three goals and three assists and a plus-two rating.

Gavin McKenna in action in the 2025 WHL final.

He piled up the trophy case with all sorts of individual honours that season. The honours that came McKenna’s way included being named the recipient of the Four Broncos Memorial Trophy as WHL player of the year and being named the CHL player of the year. I even had one or two hockey observers tell me they thought McKenna was more NHL ready than phenom centre Connor Bedard was when he joined the Chicago Blackhawks as an 18-year-old.

Due to the fact McKenna didn’t turn 18 until December 20, 2025, he wasn’t eligible for the 2025 NHL Entry Draft that was held June 27 to 28 of that year in Los Angeles, California. Had McKenna been eligible for that draft, he would have been selected first overall.

Back when the Tigers selected McKenna first overall in the 2022 WHL Prospects Draft, they were expecting to have him for his 18-year-old season due to his December birth date. That all changed on November 7, 2024 when the NCAA Division I Council voted to abolish old rules that classified CHL players as professional.

Starting on August 1, 2025, players from the CHL’s three major junior circuits in the WHL, OHL and QMJHL were eligible to play for NCAA Division I teams. Basically, CHL players will maintain NCAA eligibility as long as they have not signed an entry-level contract with an NHL team.

Since 2021, the NCAA’s guidelines regarding name, image and likeness (NIL) changed, and athletes were now able to make money through NIL deals. With McKenna being viewed in June 2025 as the consensus first overall selection for the 2026 NHL Entry Draft, the writing was on the wall that NCAA teams were in a recruiting battle to bring him to the United States.

McKenna officially committed to joining the Nittany Lions on July 8, 2025. In July, ESPN reported McKenna’s NIL money for attending Penn State is “in the ballpark” of US$700,000.

It seemed like McKenna was poised to have a dream season with Penn State before joining the NHL. Fairly or unfairly depending on your view, the NIL payout to McKenna brought expectations to perform. He ended up having the most roller-coaster season of his hockey career to date, which inadvertently might prepare him for life with the Leafs.

During the first half of the 2025-26 campaign with the Nittany Lions, McKenna came face to face with tonnes of criticism from media that covers NCAA Division I men’s hockey for being underwhelming. He recorded four goals, 14 assists and a minus-five rating in his first 16 games with Penn State.

Observers that saw McKenna play in the NCAA during that time said he has been outstanding skating on the power play or four-versus-four situations when he has time and space on the ice. The NCAA league is filled with players aged 18 to 23 with the majority being aged 20 to 23 and that changed things for McKenna when it came to five-on-five play.

When it came to McKenna’s five-on-five play going against players who are more physically developed because of their age, observers said McKenna hadn’t been good. Observers noted McKenna has shown a lack of engagement and been unwilling to compete in those situations. The word “passenger” was used to describe McKenna’s effort when it came to five-on-five play.

Gavin McKenna was the CHL player of the year in 2024-25.

The criticisms of McKenna’s play intensified at World Juniors, which were played from December 26, 2025 to this past January 5 in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. The criticisms reached their height after Canada fell 6-4 to Czechia in a semifinal contest on January 4 in Saint Paul.

In that loss, McKenna had one assist and took some bad penalties inside the last six minutes of the third period. On the eye test, he didn’t look good during five-on-five play and made business decisions bowing away from spots where he had to compete and battle for the puck. The fact McKenna lost his cool after Czechia’s empty-net goal inside the final 30 seconds of that game where he got an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and a 10-minute misconduct didn’t help things.

At that point, it was pretty definite McKenna was not a lock to be selected first overall in the 2026 NHL Entry Draft. Skilled forward Ivar Stenberg of Sweden, who played for that country’s Frolunda FC men’s team, and Canadian defenceman Keaton Verhoeff, who is an alum of the WHL’s Victoria Royals and was playing for the NCAA’s University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks, entered the chat.

On the ice, the semifinal loss ended up being the turning point of McKenna’s season. It seemed like he was hearing the noise at that point.

In Canada’s 6-3 bronze medal win over Finland one night later in Saint Paul, he looked a lot more dialed in when it came to playing a strong game at both ends of the ice. He finished with one goal and three assists to be named the game MVP for Canada.

In Canada’s seven overall games at World Juniors, McKenna recorded four goals, 10 assists and a plus-seven rating.

During the second half of the Nittany Lions season, he skated in 19 games recording 11 goals, 22 assists and a minus-two rating. On the season in Penn State, McKenna finished with 51 points coming off 15 goals and 36 assists in 35 games to go with a minus-seven rating. The Nittany Lions made it to the round of 16 in the NCAA Division I championship tournament and fell 3-1 to the University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs 3-1 at the MVP Arena in Albany, New York on March 27.

Penn State finished the 2025-26 campaign with a 21-14-2 overall record. McKenna was Big Ten Conference Scoring Champion with 38 points coming off 11 goals and 27 assists in 24 conference games. He was also named the Big Ten Freshman of the Year and a Hobey Baker Memorial Award Top 10- Finalist amongst the accolades he piled up for the season.

During the second half of the season, McKenna hit a big bump off the ice on January 31 following his team’s 5-4 overtime loss against the Michigan State University Spartans in an outdoor contest played at Beaver Stadium before 74,575 spectators on the Penn State campus.

Following an alleged physical altercation on the evening of January 31 in downtown State College, McKenna was charged with felony aggravated assault, misdemeanour simple assault, disorderly conduct and harassment. According to the Onward State media outlet, the incident occurred at 8:45 p.m. in front of the Pugh Street Parking Garage and McKenna and his group were coming from Doggie’s Pub. He was arraigned on February 4 and released on $20,000 unsecure bail.

Gavin McKenna has faced adversity since leaving the Tigers.

On February 6 after reviewing a video of the altercation, Centre County District Attorney and State College Police decided that the video showed there was no evidence that McKenna had acted with the intent to cause serious bodily injury and the aggravated assault charge was dropped.

On April 21, Forbes reported McKenna waived his formal arraignment in Pennsylvania court, which is a procedural step that moves his criminal case forward without requiring him to appear in person for that hearing. Basically at that point, the defendant’s lawyer confirmed receipt of the charges and a not guilty plea is generally entered automatically. The Forbes piece said that move is largely for procedural efficiency allowing the case to proceed without an additional court date that rarely changes the direction of the matter.

McKenna’s case has been advanced into the pretrial phase of the criminal process. At this stage, both sides engage in work to see if the matter can be resolved without a trial. Alternative resolutions are also explored at this point.

The Forbes article goes on to say McKenna will raise the self-defence argument as he is facing only misdemeanour charges, and his defence counsel is also likely telling prosecutors that no jury will convict McKenna given the claim that he was acting to protect his mother, Krystal, while also being harassed by the victim along with the fact he is a first time offender.

After that development, Krystal was charged on April 29 with two misdemeanour counts of furnishing alcohol to minors for an alleged incident occurring on the evening of January 31 inside Doggies Pub.

From what I can tell, these legal matters are still ongoing. In the time since Gavin’s initial arrest, I had a couple of folks message me that live in the United States to tell me it is common in that country for people to antagonize celebrities into getting the celebrity to attack them in order to get a big payout in civil court with a lawsuit over physical damages.

Looking at how the case is playing out with the McKenna family, I believe and speculate this whole situation stinks of the victim potentially trying to get a payout from Gavin or law enforcement officers trying to make up for missteps in doing their jobs. Still, I have learned from court reporters over the years to never be certain about the outcomes a court system will give to a case. The McKenna family legal situation has the potential to not go away any time soon and continue to be a pain in the butt dealing with the lesser charges.

In another smaller adversity that came up, Gavin McKenna did take on criticism for deciding against playing for Canada at the International Ice Hockey Federation’s Men’s World Championship held this past May 15 to 31 in Zurich and Fribourg, Switzerland, to better prepare for the NHL Draft Combine. The Combine was held in the KeyBank Center in Buffalo from June 1 to 6, and McKenna finished in the top 10 of five of the fitness tests.

With having to deal with all these adversities in the last 12 months, McKenna might be the most prepared prospect to ever play for the Leafs and the fishbowl that goes with playing in Toronto. He has also traveled a path no other first overall NHL Entry Draft selection has ever had to travel.

McKenna is also a Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation citizen, and he became the second Indigenous player to go first overall in the NHL Entry Draft with centre Dale McCourt going to the Detroit Red Wings in 1977. If McKenna flourishes into NHL stardom with the Leafs, he could make a major societal impact in being a major positive influence in Indigenous communities.

Gavin McKenna (#72) celebrates scoring a goal in the 2025 WHL Playoffs.

Due to the fact he is going to play in Toronto, it is not naïve to say more adversities are coming McKenna’s way. Those adversities would be hard pressed to be more challenging than the ones he has come across over the past 12 months.

If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

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