Film Room: Why Gavin McKenna should go first overall in the 2026 NHL Draft

Only one 2026 NHL draft-eligible prospect has the potential to change the course of a franchise on his own: ​Gavin McKenna.

​Heralded as a generational talent coming up the minor ranks, McKenna dominated, threading passes and dangling around opponents two or three years his senior and scoring upward of two points-per-game.

​Making the jump at 15-years-old to the WHL, he immediately broke the point-per-game mark with the Medicine Hat Tigers. His subsequent campaigns, 97 points in 61 games as a 16-year-old and 129 in 56 games as a 17-year-old, elevated his name amongst the CHL greats.

​He holds the record for the longest point streak in CHL history (54 consecutive games) and the third-highest scoring season for a 17-year-old in the WHL. He was also the third-fastest player to reach 200 points in league history, doing so in 118 games.

Had McKenna stayed in the WHL, he not only would have continued to reign at the top of the league’s leaderboard, but he would have likely lapped the league’s other top forwards, potentially doubling some of their production as the Tigers crushed their opposition.

Another historic season would have very likely magnified his strengths and cemented his spot at the top of 2026 NHL draft lists, confirming some prior-held assumptions about his potential and drawing comparisons to Connors Bedard and McDavid.

But McKenna took another route, joining the NCAA, not unlike other top draft-eligible forwards before him. And just like at other levels before, McKenna’s playmaking talents immediately shone under the brighter spotlights and the fanfare of the college ranks.

Playmaking

Like Patrick Kane and Nikita Kucherov, the two players who most influence McKenna’s game, the winger imposes his will on the ice. Knowing almost preternaturally how his movements impact defences and how his teammates will react, McKenna controls players like pieces on a chessboard. He invites pressure, drags opponents with him, changes speeds and shifts corridors, all in the goal of breaking the opposition’s structure and freeing teammates for passes.

If defencemen pressure him too hard, he instantly dangles around them or links up with teammates, giving them open shots in the slot. If they backtrack too much, he slows down and takes advantage of all the available space in front, like a commander dictating the attack. With east-west movements, creative rush patterns, and passing exchanges, he pushes the opposition back further and further, reinforcing his team’s position until an opening appears.

The game looks slower for McKenna than for everyone else. Pressure doesn’t faze him. Capable of reading opponents’ intentions, anticipating and evading their pokechecks with ease, he can buy time and let plays develop.

The more options and space given on the rush, the more dangerous he becomes.

It’s through his deceptive act that he establishes control over the ice. Stick at the hip, rapidly shuffling the puck with his head up, he keeps opponents guessing as to his next choice of play, freezing them in place. From that posture, he can launch into a dangle or quickly pass to teammates with his backhand or forehand. His passing arsenal extends far past the typical forward. He’s hitting teammates at every angle by hooking or slipping the puck under sticks, threading it between his legs, or spinning on himself.

While McKenna is an elite stickhandler, it’s mostly in his playmaking game that his individual skills shine. You won’t see him drive up ice and take on multiple defenders like McDavid or Bedard.

Yes, McKenna scores due to his superior skills — projectable skating, well-aimed shots, and elite handling and passing skills — but mostly by expertly applying superior tactics and involving teammates in his plays, again, not unlike Patrick Kane and Nikita Kucherov.

Adaptation to the NCAA

While his creativity could be unleashed every shift in Medicine Hat, against weaker competition surrounded by other talented teammates, his highlight reel wasn’t as inspiring in his first few weeks in college.

Instead of coming in bursts, the points seem to only trickle in. The league’s increased physicality and pace played a part in his struggles, but other factors related to his style of play explained the rest.  

Playing a different system that offered less passing support off the rush and in the offensive zone reduced the playmaker’s effectiveness. Many of his attacks hit a wall. Even if he could invite the pressure of multiple defenders, even if he played keep-away for long seconds, he often lacked the options necessary to complete his plays.

McKenna was forced into suboptimal choices of plays: getting rid of the puck, dangling around multiple sticks, or sending a low-percentage shot on net. Those actions generally led to an immediate change of possession and counterattack, forcing McKenna to spend more time forechecking, backchecking, and defending in his zone than he ever had before, exposing how underdeveloped those facets of his game were.

Weaknesses

McKenna lost more board battles than he won at the college level. He relied on his passing and stickhandling skills to get pucks off the board, turning toward defenders on the boards to try and slide the puck through them, exposing the disc, instead of turning his back to them and using his knees, hips, and a free arm to shield the puck and push away from their pressure.

His lighter frame put him at a disadvantage in battles, but there’s more to board battles than stature. We’ve seen other slighter forwards come out ahead in scrums. McKenna simply lacked the physical techniques needed to level the playing field.

More than his physicality, however, it’s McKenna’s very low motor away from the puck that bothered our scouts. One can make up for a lack of strength by outworking the opposition in all areas of the ice. In many shifts or even full games, the winger looked disconnected from teammates, gliding around, straight-legged, waiting for a pass and a chance to carry the puck up the ice.

His lack of physical ability, motor skills, and defensive awareness hurt his offensive game, but even more so his checking game. Unable to engage and immobilize opponents, he relied on his anticipation to get the puck back, cutting his routes short or floating ahead of the play to try to intercept passes. His gambles sometimes paid off, but also backfired.

This is partly what happens in the first clip in the video below.

Instead of going at the puck-carrying opponent on the forecheck, a route that would have kept him on the defensive side of the play, he circles away from the puck, trying to get the jump on a pass. Not receiving any pressure, the puck-carrier picked up speed on a runway, pushing back the line of defence and linking up with a teammate attacking the slot. On the final pass, McKenna is seen gliding back, oblivious to the breakdown in coverage. He was too far to help.

In many ways, especially early in the season, McKenna embodied the stereotype of the elite scorer who barely cares about the defensive side of the play and shies away from battles. While the same concerns persisted in the second half of the season, some of his later performances gave us more hope about his ability to build a more effective off-ice game.

Second-half surge

Bad luck plagued McKenna in the early months, offensively and defensively.

While McKenna couldn’t create at the same rate as in the WHL, his early production wasn’t representative of his talents. He was still working the system and creating more than enough looks for his teammates to climb the NCAA leaderboard, but for likely the first time in his career, his creativity wasn’t being rewarded.

“His even-strength Fenwick on-ice shooting percentage – the percentage of shots attempts, excluding blocks – that find the twine when he’s on the ice is under four per cent, or three percentage points below the NCAA average,” wrote Elite Prospects Head of Scouting Mitchell Brown in a November article. “If McKenna had even an NCAA-average on-ice shooting percentage, he’d have nine points at even-strength and 18 overall, the latter of which would be tied for third in the NCAA. And, given the barrage of high-quality looks he’s creating for his teammates, it’s safe to assume he should have an elevated on-ice shooting percentage.”

The percentages began swinging in his favour a couple of months later, as he lined up multi-point games, including an eight-point performance against Ohio State. But it’s only in the later months of the season that McKenna seemed to figure out the college game and that his team seemed to build more chemistry.

By season’s end, he had established himself as the top draft-year NCAA creator in recent memory, setting up chances at a higher clip than Macklin Celebrini and Adam Fantilli combined, while being a more influential part of his team’s offence.

​Creation is only part of the equation, of course, as McKenna still failed to have the defensive and physical impacts of those two. However, McKenna showed significant growth. The effort was better on more nights, leading to a return of his puck-thievery and interception skills across the ice, improving his defensive impact. He got involved in the backcheck more and engaged in more battles.

​While he still has a lot of physical work to do, as shown in the chart below, he was managing pucks far better. In the first half, he was extremely turnover-prone, even for a puck-dominant creator. That improved considerably. He completed more transition plays, extended the cycle rather than forcing pucks through, and connected his slot passes at a higher clip. That was enough to make him among the very best rush creators and the best at completed plays per turnover.

​His improvements made him a clear choice for first overall again.

Projection

As soon as next season, McKenna could score on an NHL team, leveraging his playmaking and power play capabilities. That immediate impact is not certain, however, and not really what matters with him or what separates him from other top-end prospects.

Considering McKenna’s light frame, elite hockey sense, and the adaptability that those highly clever players often show, we believe he has a longer development runway than most.

While his physical ability and defensive game should remain weaknesses, we can safely expect him to develop those facets under pressure in the NHL. Adding muscle could transform his wall play, enabling him to better extend possession for his team in the offensive zone and make plays off the low cycle, not just the high one. Working on his shot would transform him into a more dual-threat scorer rather than a one-dimensional playmaker, making him even more unpredictable, and continuing to improve his checking game would increase his overall impact on the game, turning him into more than a pure offensive driver.

Marginal improvements in some of those areas would make McKenna significantly more effective, fueling an already elite playmaking game.

In his prime, he could break the 100-point plateau, acting as his team’s primary powerplay and five-on-five orchestrator, not unlike Kane.

Kane vs. McKenna

Kane is one of the, if not the, best American hockey players ever, posting multiple NHL seasons of 90+ points. He inspired a generation of hockey players, including McKenna. And like McKenna, Kane wasn’t universally seen as a sure-fire, future top-of-the-league talent in his draft season.

Coming up in a different era of hockey where size mattered even more at the draft, he started the year outside of the first-round conversation for many scouts, only rising as his playmaking talent became impossible to ignore.

Even at the end of the season, not every outlet ranked him first on their board and we assume that some NHL teams also preferred other prospects. NHL Central Scouting ranked him 2nd in North America behind Kyle Turris. The now-defunct International Scouting Service had him 2nd overall, behind Jakub Voráček, and Dobber Prospects put him 7th overall.

“Agile, fearless offensive dynamo who can work wonders on the powerplay; owns perhaps the best set of hands in the CHL,” wrote Dobber Prospects in their profile. “Non-stop motor propels Kane around the zone, making him nearly impossible to contain. As with all players in this mould, the slight forward is at his best on the powerplay, capable of single-handedly generating goals. Even strength is the problem, with backchecking the furthest thing from Kane's mind. And at his small size, that willingness to fly into danger may pose injury problems down the road.”

Some doubts about Kane's lack of defensive and physical abilities lingered, not unlike McKenna.  

“I don't know if [his physicality and defence are] where they need to be right now,” said one NHL scout at the time to Hockey’s Future. “Has he improved with that over the years? Sure he has, so I don't see any reason why he wouldn't continue to improve.”

In 2007, another scout also suggested that a return to junior may be of benefit to help Kane continue the maturing process. "Kane's definitely going to be [in the NHL]... It's hard to say whether he'll be there next year, though," he said. "He's not a [Sidney] Crosby. I think he's got to work away from the puck. I think he gets a little bit frustrated if the puck doesn't come to him. Those are things that are going to come with maturity and I don't think it's going to hurt him if he does come back.

“The question is going to be his size,” said another scout to the The Hockey News . “What is he, 5-foot-10, 170 pounds? But in the new game, there’s obviously tons of room for guys like that. What we’re waiting to see is, is he going to do it for 90 games, or is he going to flame out now that it’s the dog days of February?”

“There are about six or seven guys squarely in the mix (for No. 1 overall) and he’s there,” said another NHL scout. “There’s lots to like. He’s highly, highly skilled, he’s very smart, he sees the ice well, he scores, he competes.”

All of those sources and scouts also praised Kane’s vision and stickhandling skills, but the most glowing review came from his linemate, Sam Gagner, in an interview with Hockey’s Future.

"He makes the game just so easy for his linemates. He has so many elements to his game that he's able to make time and space not only for himself but for his linemates. You always have to be ready for a pass because he'll hit you when you're not expecting it and it's usually an awesome play. Obviously, his skill level is unbelievable, but his vision out there and his scoring touch are something you don't see very often.”

One can draw some parallels between McKenna and Kane, even if 18 years separate their draft years. Similar strengths and playstyle. Similar weaknesses. What turned Kane into a superstar is also what Gagner identified as his best characteristic: his ‘’constant drive to be the best.’’

That drive will ultimately determine McKenna’s career. If he can adapt his game in a similar way to Kane as he ages in the NHL, leveraging his elite skills to improve his effectiveness in all three zones, he will no doubt become a top-end NHL scorer.