BUFFALO — The Toronto Maple Leafs interviewed 65-plus players of the 90 invited to the NHL Scouting Combine this week.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Toronto general manager John Chayka visited Penn State left wing Gavin McKenna and his family at his home in Whitehorse, Yukon, prior to the six-day event.<\/p>\n
It made sense considering Chayka has a big decision to make having the No. 1 selection in the 2026 Upper Deck NHL Draft after the club won the NHL Draft Lottery on May 5.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McKenna (5-foot-11, 170 pounds) is the projected No. 1 pick in the draft to be held June 26-27 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo. The first round will be June 26 (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, ESPN+, SN, TVAS) and rounds 2-7 on June 27 (11 a.m. ET; NHLN, ESPN+, SN).<\/p>\n
Chayka was hired May 3, along with senior executive adviser, hockey operations Mats Sundin, following the firing of general manager Brad Treliving on March 30.<\/p>\n
“It’s not every day you get a chance to make the first overall selection and to do in a market like Toronto with obviously the tradition, and the history and the expectation of excellence, makes it really unique,” Chayka said. “He’s a small-town kid … It’s a remote area of the world, very peaceful, but beautiful. And within that, I think there’s some real resolve around who he is and what his career means to him and his family, and I find it impressive.”<\/p>\n
Here are 10 things learned from the 2026 NHL Scouting Combine:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO — The Toronto Maple Leafs interviewed 65-plus players of the 90 invited to the NHL Scouting Combine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-720438","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\/720438","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=720438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}