McKenna looked calm with the puck, carrying the puck up the ice, stick-handling in traffic, whipping passes through seams.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t seen him frantic — ever,\u201d Gadowsky said. \u201cEverything he does has a purpose. He\u2019s always dictating. It doesn\u2019t really look like he\u2019s reacting; he\u2019s dictating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gadowsky said McKenna was good without the puck as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike, really good,\u201d Gadowsky said. \u201cHe had some excellent backchecks. He played his position extremely well in the \u2018D\u2019 zone. I was actually really impressed with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The attention doesn\u2019t bother McKenna. Gadowsky called him “the chillest dude.”<\/p>\n
\u201cGavin is really good for our team in that way,\u201d Gadowsky said. \u201cYou don\u2019t often say that about a freshman. But he\u2019s just so chill, that actually is a really calming influence. Like, there\u2019s a lot of noise around this. \u2026 Emotions run a little bit higher because of it, but he is able just to take everything in stride and stay very calm, and I think it\u2019s actually very good for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the game, the press conference room was packed. Not only were there reporters, but there was a camera crew with a boom mic. Cerrato sat next to McKenna and gave up the spotlight, even though he led the Nittany Lions with five points (two goals, three assists). At one point, he even interrupted McKenna to praise him.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, he\u2019s Gavin McKenna,\u201d Cerrato said. \u201cHe\u2019s the guy. But I don\u2019t think you guys see the amount of outside noise there is. Like, I mean, we\u2019ve got people coming to the hotel after [the team] bus, after dinner. It\u2019s crazy. He\u2019s 17, and he handling it like that. It\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McKenna looked calm with the puck, carrying the puck up the ice, stick-handling in traffic, whipping passes through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-189155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}