Gavin McKenna ended his freshman season at Penn State with 51 points and enters the NHL draft as the No. 1-ranked North American skater by NHL Central Scouting. He is expected by many to go No. 1 in the 2026 NHL Draft, a status that gives Penn State a shot at its first men's hockey player taken in the first round.
The numbers explain the rise. McKenna posted 15 goals and 36 assists in 35 games, finished tied for fifth in the NCAA in scoring, and ranked second at 1.46 points per game. He was also a top 10 finalist for the Hobey Baker Award and won the Big Ten scoring title.
Penn State and McKenna
That production came in McKenna's first season at Penn State after he spent parts of three seasons with Medicine Hat of the Western Hockey League. He played one of the season's most watched offensive roles on a team that had never before put a men's hockey player into first-round NHL Draft territory.
McKenna also set or tied nine school records, which shows how quickly his game translated at the college level. He was one of 175 CHL players to make the jump to NCAA hockey, and he did it as the sixth-youngest player in men's college hockey during the season.
Joe Mason's influence
The pressure around him was not only about the rink. McKenna was compared to Patrick Kane and viewed as a top prospect, yet he still faced nights when the pressure and criticism online felt overwhelming.
His grandfather, Joe Mason, reset that part of the story. Mason is a 72-year-old survivor of Canada's Indian residential school system, and McKenna said, "He's a huge influence," and, "He's gone through so much in his life. For me, that's my motivation."
McKenna said he learned to keep things in perspective after Mason told him he had been left in the mountains as a boy and forced to survive on his own for three or four days. "I just can't even imagine what that was like at such a young age," he said, adding, "If I've got something going on in my life that's hard, I know it's nothing compared to what he's gone through."
Buffalo draft date
The Upper Deck 2026 NHL Draft will be held June 26-27 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, with the first round on June 26 at 7 p.m. ET and rounds 2-7 on June 27 at 11 a.m. ET. For McKenna, the path from Penn State's freshman year to Buffalo now runs through one simple question: whether the player who dominated the NCAA scoring race can become the first name taken in June.
