The language used to explain Gavin McKenna’s sport typically comes straight from the realm of fantasy.
“He is a unicorn expertise. He is sensible,” mentioned Craig Button, a senior hockey analyst with TSN and former NHL normal supervisor.
Generally often called “McKenna Magic,” the 17-year-old participant from Whitehorse and member of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation has been described as a hockey “phenom” and a “generational expertise.”
YouTube spotlight reels present the teenager frequently passing by means of opponents’ legs and sticks, and ripping it into the online with razor-like precision, garnering comparisons to Sidney Crosby and Jack Hughes. A video of a McKenna purpose posted to the Western Hockey League’s (WHL) YouTube in April is titled: “GAVIN MCKENNA IS NOT HUMAN.”
After three seasons with the Drugs Hat Tigers, Canada is dropping one in every of its greatest younger gamers — a 12 months from his probably decide as No. 1 within the 2026 NHL draft — to the U.S. And whereas some have fun McKenna’s selection, it has despatched others throughout the hockey world reeling.
Because of a change in guidelines that permits Canadian Hockey League (CHL) gamers to modify between the league and faculty sports activities in the U.S. Nationwide Collegiate Athletic Affiliation (NCAA), McKenna introduced this week he is headed to Pennsylvania State College within the fall, the place a cheque of round $1 million Cdn is rumoured to await him.
For the primary time because the NCAA has been allowed to pay its pupil athletes, a high-profile Canadian hockey participant is lacing up for an enormous payday. Seventeen-year-old Gavin McKenna is the newest Canadian Hockey League participant to be accepted by the U.S. group. And as George Maratos experiences, it’s a massive deal for the presumed number-one decide in subsequent 12 months’s NHL draft.
Many concern it may encourage others observe go well with, draining the home-grown hockey expertise pool Canada is understood for, and which helps fill small-city stadiums throughout the nation, rallying communities across the sport.
Some argue that Canadian junior hockey must re-evaluate its components for creating younger expertise and making ready distinctive gamers for the NHL.
“We’re disillusioned that he isn’t coming again,” WHL commissioner Dan Close to instructed CBC Information on Wednesday, calling McKenna an “excellent and distinctive participant” who helped the Drugs Hat Tigers win the 2025 WHL Championship.
With the Tigers, coached by Willie Desjardins, McKenna remodeled from a promising younger expertise into the driving power behind Drugs Hat’s ascent, falling simply quick on this season’s Memorial Cup ultimate.
“For 50 years, we have been working inside a components round: what does the perfect growth setting appear to be to get gamers to the NHL?” Close to mentioned.
He says the league will check out that components, and methods of higher promoting it. “We’re not simply going to take a seat right here with our arms folded,” he mentioned.
Gary Jerome, a hockey dad and uncle to 4 youngsters in Whitehorse, says he and his household are McKenna followers and applaud the participant’s choice, however he additionally thinks it is a signal Canada may make some modifications.
“Sorry for my language, however it sucks for Canadian hockey as a result of they are not producing the identical qualities because the States are, proper? It is type of Canada’s loss,” mentioned Jerome, who isn’t any stranger to relocating for hockey.
In 2017, Jerome and his household moved from Fort McPherson, a Gwi’chin First Nation within the Northwest Territories, to Whitehorse so his son Evander, 12, and twin 10-year-old daughters may play aggressive hockey. He says the native and federal governments ought to make investments extra in small-town sports activities infrastructure.
Chris Gruben, whose son William performs within the Whitehorse Mustangs with Evander and moved to town from Inuvik, Nunavut, mentioned that, to him, the vital factor is to have fun “a younger Indigenous participant actually paving the way in which.”
A ‘younger,’ ‘new’ program
McKenna’s selection got here down to 2 U.S. faculties, Michigan State and Penn State, each a part of the NCAA’s Division 1 Massive 10 groups.
It was “most likely the toughest choice he is ever needed to make in his life,” in accordance with his father. Willy McKenna added that the affect his son’s choice may have on the way forward for hockey in Canada was a part of what made it tough. “It is quite a bit to placed on a younger man,” he mentioned.
“He feels excited in regards to the Penn State program. It is younger, it is new,” he mentioned.
The faculty’s NCAA hockey program is simply over a decade outdated however, underneath the course of Canadian former professional Man Gadowsky, has carried out quite a bit to catch as much as well-established rivals, together with constructing a $89-million US state-of-the-art facility.
For Penn State, it may imply a greater likelihood on the Nationwide Championships — particularly with one other proficient younger Canadian recruit, Jackson Smith. The pair aren’t alone in making the hop from CHL to NCAA within the coming 12 months. Keaton Verhoeff, from Saskatchewan, who’s additionally projected to be a high 5 NHL draft decide for 2026, dedicated to the College of North Dakota’s program on the finish of Could. A handful of others have made the leap, too.
Karen Weaver, the educational director of the College of Pennsylvania’s Collegiate Athletics Certificates Program and an professional on faculty sports activities, says NCAA athletes’ comparatively new rights to call, picture and likeness income sharing with colleges is making the NCAA much more engaging to recruits like McKenna.
Many of the NCAA income share historically goes to soccer gamers due to the recognition of their sport within the U.S. For a bit of it to go to a hockey participant, “that is a shift. We do not understand how that is going to go,” Weaver mentioned.
NCAA hockey investments ‘unsustainable’: WHL official
Chris Peters calls it “the dawning of a brand new period” within the growth of hockey expertise in North America, however the YouTube hockey commentator for FloHockey does not suppose it spells the top of CHL’s success.
“Fewer gamers will play longer within the CHL, however that does not imply that you just nonetheless will not have these high gamers play there,” Peters mentioned in a current video.
Close to, of the WHL, has his doubts that U.S. faculties’ hefty investments in hockey are going to repay. “I feel Canadians ought to really feel a bit of threatened proper now, amidst all the geopolitical tensions … that our gamers are being lured away by a somewhat unsustainable enterprise mannequin,” Close to mentioned.
Whereas he says his league goes to observe carefully how the brand new Canadian NCAA recruits fare within the fall, he says it might not be enhancements which are wanted at house, however for Canadian junior leagues to raised promote their present applications.
Peters agrees. He says that NCAA gamers may additionally select to return to the CHL after a while.
“The doom and gloom is misplaced,” he mentioned. “It is not a demise knell. It is not going to finish junior hockey.”
As for McKenna’s fantastical puck abilities, they appear certain for greatness regardless of the place he lands.
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