Gavin McKenna was the most talked-about prospect to arrive in the NHL since Connor Bedard, and the Toronto Maple Leafs handed him a second-line role from his first shift. Three games in, the underlying numbers are not cooperating.
McKenna currently sits last on the entire Toronto roster in expected goals share at five-on-five. Not last among forwards, or last among rookies. Last on the team, with nobody below him.
What are Gavin McKenna’s stats so far?
The counting numbers are sparse enough on their own. He has no points through three games, one shot and two giveaways in his debut, and a minus-2 rating that has stayed where it started. What’s drawing more attention is what happens around him when he’s on the ice.
Through two games, his Corsi sat at 28.3 percent and his scoring chance share at 28 percent, according to Natural Stat Trick figures cited by The Hockey Writers. Playing alongside John Tavares and William Nylander, Toronto has spent much of his ice time pinned in its own end. For contrast, Easton Cowan leads the club at 73.48 percent in the same category.
McKenna hasn’t tried to dress it up. Asked to assess his debut, a 3-2 loss to Montreal, he was blunt about it.
“Not great,” he said. “I had a couple turnovers.”
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He also pointed to the obvious adjustment facing any 18-year-old arriving from college hockey, where he put up 51 points in 35 games at Penn State: less time to react, less space to work in.
Context is worth applying here. Three games is a tiny sample, and his usage makes the numbers look worse than they might otherwise, since a teenager handed top-six minutes against NHL competition is going to get exposed in ways a sheltered fourth-liner never would. Auston Matthews scoring four goals on his Toronto debut a decade ago set a standard almost nobody meets, and McKenna has shown flashes of the creativity that made him the first pick.
Toronto has lost two of its first three games.
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