Gavin McKenna Is Real. If the Leafs Win the Lottery, This Is Who They Get.

The player the whole league is betting on

Since the start of the Connor Bedard draft year, NHL scouts have been quietly trying to calibrate expectations for what comes next. The 2024 and 2025 drafts were competitive at the top without producing a consensus generational forward. 2026 is different. 2026 has Gavin McKenna.

If the lottery breaks Toronto's way on May 5, McKenna is the player the Leafs will almost certainly be drafting. Here's who he is and what he'd mean for the franchise.

The résumé

McKenna is a left-shot forward, 5-foot-11 and 170 pounds, born July 20, 2007, in Whitehorse, Yukon. He broke into professional hockey conversations as a 15-year-old already on scouts' radar in the Western Hockey League with the Medicine Hat Tigers.

In his draft-minus-one season (2024-25), he put up 129 points — 41 goals, 88 assists — in 56 games with Medicine Hat. That line doesn't just grade as elite for a 17-year-old; it puts him in rare company. Since 2000, only three 17-year-olds in Canadian major junior have cleared 120 points in a single WHL season: Nic Petan (120), Connor Bedard (149), and McKenna (129). The WHL and the Canadian Hockey League both named him player of the year. He was, by any measurable standard, the best draft-eligible player in the world at that age.

McKenna's 2025-26 season is split. He began the year returning to the Tigers, then made a late-2025 jump to Penn State University's NCAA program — one of several high-profile junior players testing the new rules allowing CHL players to compete in NCAA hockey. Through 18 games as a Penn State freshman, he'd put up 19 points (4 goals, 15 assists). His final season line across the two levels: 51 points in 35 games, which tied him for fifth in all of NCAA scoring, with his 1.46 points per game ranking second in the country.

What he does well

Passing and vision

Every scouting service that has seriously broken down McKenna lands in roughly the same place: the defining trait is his playmaking. Not "good hands." Not "sees the ice well." Genuine, elite-for-a-draft-class passing vision — the kind that has scouts reaching for the Anze Kopitar and Nicklas Backstrom comparisons, though he profiles as a winger rather than a natural center.

Ninety-two percent of his career junior production has come through his stickwork and setup ability in the offensive zone. His 88 assists in 56 WHL games in 2024-25 weren't cushioning from linemates; he was the primary driver, usually the first touch that broke apart the structure around him.

Skating

First-step quickness and edge work are also graded best-in-class for this draft. McKenna wins the inside lane consistently and changes direction in tight areas the way the top tier of modern NHL forwards do. It's not McDavid straight-line speed. It's something closer to the controlled, low-center-of-gravity agility that Mitch Marner had at the same age.

Creativity in tight

The trait that sets him apart from previous high-skill WHL products is his ability to make plays inside closed space. He doesn't need a clean lane. He doesn't need room. He manufactures time through shoulder checks and stick positioning, then releases a pass or puts a shot on net before the defender has recovered the angle.

What scouts worry about

The NCAA adjustment showed holes

McKenna's jump to Penn State is where the conversation gets interesting. His production dropped — 1.06 points per game at Penn State versus 2.30 in his WHL season — and while that's partly the pro-level jump, scouts have flagged specific issues. His lack of off-puck engagement and defensive commitment drew more attention than it had in junior. A high share of his NCAA production came on the power play, which opens the question of whether his 5-on-5 impact translates cleanly to NHL-speed hockey.

None of this meaningfully threatens his status as the consensus #1. It does suggest the transition year will be more than a rubber-stamp. He's not Bedard; Bedard's NCAA production at 17 would have been otherworldly if he'd gone that route, and McKenna's NCAA numbers, while elite, don't quite clear that bar.

Frame

At 5-foot-11 and 170 pounds, McKenna is listed but not built. The frame isn't a concern in the modern NHL — plenty of top-line forwards play at that size — but it does mean his transition to NHL physicality will take time. Teams drafting him should expect a 19-year-old who needs a full season before his body matches the pace of the league, in the Bedard-with-Chicago model.

What he'd mean for Toronto

Toronto's offensive middle is thin. Auston Matthews is still a top-five center when healthy, but his knee injury in March 2026 reset timelines that had been fragile to begin with. William Nylander is a right wing. John Tavares is aging. Matthew Knies is a useful power forward but not a play driver. After the top three, the Leafs' offensive depth has been carried by short-term signings — Maccelli, Joshua, Roy before he was traded. None of them is a long-term top-6 solution.

McKenna, drafted at 18, would not be an instant fix. He'd spend at least one season in the development model and likely play a transitional 19-year-old NHL season in a protected third-line role. By 2028-29 — the year Matthews' current contract expires — he would be in his third NHL year, entering his first big contract as either a high-end second-line winger or a breakout first-line player.

That timeline lines up almost perfectly with the Leafs' cap cliff. The cap page shows a wave of contract expiries between 2028 and 2030, with Matthews, Knies, and Rielly all in play. The new core emerging just as the old core comes off the books — including Nylander carrying into 2032 — is the optimal planning case. McKenna slots into it.

The comparisons that actually track

Scouts have hit the Backstrom, Kopitar, and Marner comparisons. The Marner comp is probably the most honest for the Leafs audience — high-skill, playmaking winger with elite vision and manageable frame, capable of 80-to-100 point seasons at his peak. The Backstrom comp is slightly aspirational but reflects the class of passer scouts think he can become.

What McKenna is not: a power forward, a physical driver, or a 50-goal shooter. He'll score, but his game is going to be built around creating for others. In Toronto, that profile would complement Matthews and Nylander cleanly and solve one of the team's actual structural problems — a lack of creative playmaking beyond the top line.

The short version

Gavin McKenna is the consensus #1 in the 2026 draft. Elite passing, elite skating, average size, questions about off-puck habits that are normal for his age and shouldn't scare a team off. At his peak, high-end second-line winger with first-line-winger upside. If the Leafs keep their pick on May 5, this is who they get. If they don't, someone else's rebuild gets a decade shorter.

Lottery day is in seventeen days.