{"id":194525,"date":"2025-10-07T02:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T02:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/194525\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T02:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T02:33:08","slug":"gavin-mckenna-is-already-making-an-impact-in-the-ncaa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/194525\/","title":{"rendered":"Gavin McKenna is already making an impact in the NCAA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Gavin McKenna Show<\/a>, college hockey nation.<\/p>\n

The player who many believe will be the first overall pick<\/a> in the 2026 NHL Draft made a significant impact on the opening weekend of Penn State University\u2019s 2025-26 season. To start off his freshman campaign, McKenna assisted on the Nittany Lions\u2019 first two goals against Arizona State on Friday night. Then, in the second meeting against the Sun Devils on the weekend, the 17-year-old scored what ended up being the game-winning goal in a 4-2 win, helping Penn State complete a sweep in Tempe.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strong start for what\u2019s going to be a highly scrutinized season for McKenna, who made waves for electing to pursue college hockey rather than stay in the Western Hockey League. However, if he can show the offensive prowess he did this past weekend for the entire year, he\u2019ll definitely bolster his stock as the future No. 1 pick, and possibly take home the Hobey Baker Award.<\/p>\n

On Monday\u2019s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE<\/a>, Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton discuss how impressive McKenna\u2019s NCAA debut was this past weekend.<\/p>\n

Carter Hutton: This was obviously the highly anticipated debut of Gavin McKenna for me at Penn State. He played at ASU, getting his first taste of the student section at ASU. Forks up, right? That\u2019s their saying. And what do you do? After he nails his goal, he goes forks-down to the crowd. He was playing the villain role. His two assists on Friday were unbelievable. High traffic area. Then he scores a huge goal. After the game, too, what I loved was him going over to the student section and whacking his stick on the glass\u2026I can\u2019t imagine what Gavin McKenna is getting into\u2026what\u2019s going on with him, and obviously, being the biggest prospect coming in, the money he\u2019s making. So, for him to perform on that big stage\u2026three points in his first two is a great start for him.<\/p>\n

Tyler Yaremchuk: This is just so nasty. Mike Barner \u2013 who does a bunch of really good social content around the NHL \u2013 he had a great tweet being like, \u2018Isn\u2019t this way cooler than traveling on a bus to Wenatchee and beating a team 8-2 because you\u2019re way too good for the level?\u2019 I love the CHL, but the fact that these kind of high-end prospects, like a McKenna, can go to a level where the competition\u2019s a little bit better, they\u2019re playing against older players, and the atmosphere, like, this is just so electric.<\/p>\n

You can watch the full segment and entire episode here\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Gavin McKenna Show, college hockey nation. The player who many believe will be the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-194525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194525","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=194525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}