{"id":778343,"date":"2026-07-03T20:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T20:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/778343\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T20:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T20:21:08","slug":"maple-leafs-sergei-bobrovsky-to-wear-no-72-instead-of-gavin-mckenna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/778343\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs&#8217; Sergei Bobrovsky to wear No. 72 instead of Gavin McKenna"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bobrovsky said they had a long chat about it on Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a bright guy. He&#8217;s got really positive energy and I&#8217;m excited to watch him develop into a big superstar in this league,&#8221; Bobrovsky said.<\/p>\n<p>McKenna told reporters Thursday he would give up the number that both have worn throughout their careers out of deference to the two-time Stanley Cup champ, who signed a three-year, $21-million deal with the Maple Leafs on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If he wants it, he can have it,&#8221; McKenna said.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out, Bobrovsky did indeed want it.<\/p>\n<p>Now, all eyes will turn to McKenna&#8217;s choice of number.<\/p>\n<p>He wore No. 72 at Penn State this season and with the WHL&#8217;s Medicine Hat Tigers and his\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/koshtorontosun\/status\/2072729710576988531\" rel=\"nofollow\">backup Nos. 9 and 27<\/a>\u00a0are retired by the franchise in honour of Charlie Conacher, Ted Kennedy, Darryl Sittler and Frank Mahovlich.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bobrovsky said they had a long chat about it on Thursday night. &#8220;He&#8217;s a bright guy. He&#8217;s got&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-778343","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\/778343","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=778343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}