Gavin McKenna Refuels The Hype Machine

If you can name just one current college hockey player, I bet it's freshman Penn State winger Gavin McKenna. After carving up the ice with the Medicine Hat Tigers and establishing himself as the likely top prize of the 2026 NHL draft lottery, the kid from the Yukon moved to the Big Ten, where he was expected to play one impressive year before signing with whichever bad pro team got the luckiest. He's a little on the small side, though he literally just turned 18, but McKenna's wowed scouts with fantastic production at the WHL level, finesse skating, and brilliant playmaking when the puck is on his stick.

At Penn State, however, there's been a bit of an adjustment in expectations. McKenna's picked up four goals and 14 assists across 16 games, so he's certainly having a very good season by most standards. But there are new questions about how much McKenna can impact the game when he's not working magic with possession, and against the toughest competition that the NCAA can muster—namely Michigan and Michigan State—he's suffered through some outright bad nights. There's nothing entirely alarming about one of the youngest kids on the ice facing adversity at a new level, but the team that falls into the No. 1 pick next year will surely want to take a long, long look at the more aggressive Swedish winger Ivar Stenberg and the prototypical top defenseman at North Dakota, Keaton Verhoeff, even if they pull the trigger on McKenna in the end.