{"id":18564,"date":"2025-07-24T13:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T13:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/18564\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T13:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T13:03:08","slug":"gavin-mckenna-presumptive-top-pick-in-2026-nhl-draft-excited-about-penn-state-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/18564\/","title":{"rendered":"Gavin McKenna, presumptive top pick in 2026 NHL Draft, ‘excited’ about Penn State opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gavin McKenna made waves when he announced earlier in July that he was leaving the CHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers<\/a> to play for the Penn State Nittany Lions in NCAA next season.<\/p>\n

The presumptive No. 1 pick in next year’s NHL Draft\u00a0had 41 goals and 88 assists in 56 regular-season games for the Tigers last season at the age of 17.<\/p>\n

He joins the Nittany Lions after helping Medicine Hat win its first WHL title since 2007 and reach the Memorial Cup final.<\/p>\n

McKenna says he’s excited for the new challenges that college hockey can provide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things to be excited about next season,\u201d McKenna\u00a0said to The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler. \u201cHeading to college, playing my first game. That\u2019ll be pretty amazing.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

McKenna’s 129 points in 59 games in the WHL a season ago were 30 more than three-time Hart Trophy winner Connor McDavid<\/a> scored at the same age playing in the OHL.<\/p>\n

His performance at the World Juniors for Canada left a lot to be desired, given his reputation playing in junior hockey. He scored just one goal in five games before Canada was eliminated in the quarter-finals by Czechia.<\/p>\n

“And then with the World Juniors, last year wasn\u2019t the best way to go out, and I know a lot of us will have a big chip on our shoulders this year, and that\u2019s going to be exciting,” McKenna said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for Penn State, the Nittany Lions have only played in Division 1 in NCAA men’s hockey since 2011, and the program qualified for its first Frozen Four appearance at last year’s tournament, where they fell to Boston University in the semifinals.<\/p>\n

McKenna felt a connection to the team, formed by the excitement around the up-and-coming program.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the start of this whole entire process, I got the feeling that it was going to be Penn State that I was going to go to,\u201d McKenna said. \u201cAnd then once I toured the area and I got to see the facilities and meet some of the people there and some of the guys, it was just a place that I knew right away I could call home and then on top of that they have a great team and they have a chance of winning it, and obviously that\u2019s the goal next year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gavin McKenna made waves when he announced earlier in July that he was leaving the CHL’s Medicine Hat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-18564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}