Blueger watched McKenna play for Canada in the 2026 World Junior Championship, when he had 14 points (four goals, 10 assists) in seven games, and feels the young forward will \u201cbring a lot of skill, a lot of excitement.\u201d<\/p>\n
McKenna finished tied for fifth in the NCAA with 51 points (15 goals, 36 assists) for Penn State last season and was a top 10 finalist for the Hobey Baker Award, presented annually to the top NCAA men\u2019s hockey player.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnytime you get a No. 1 overall pick, there\u2019s a lot of hype, a lot of excitement and a lot of attention,\u201d Blueger said. \u201cMost of the time, those guys deliver.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think obviously the attention that he\u2019s getting, just the media attention from what I\u2019ve heard from guys in Toronto, it\u2019ll be a little bit different. That\u2019ll be interesting to see firsthand.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Blueger, it also will be interesting to see how he and the many other new faces fare with Toronto this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s already some really, really great players that are there and that they\u2019ve signed,\u201d Blueger said. \u201cJust hopefully be a part of a good team and just do my part to contribute.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blueger watched McKenna play for Canada in the 2026 World Junior Championship, when he had 14 points (four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-845181","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\/845181","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=845181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}