Gavin McKenna‘s last shift for the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday came at 10:20 of the second period with the score 2-2. He never got another one. Not through the rest of the period, not through a third in which Toronto surrendered a 4-2 lead, and not in the overtime that followed as Buffalo completed the comeback.
The No. 1 pick in the 2026 draft finished with 6:36 of ice time in a 5-4 loss at Scotiabank Arena. Jim Hiller was asked to explain it and didn’t try to dress it up.
“That was my decision,” Hiller said. “We went for a stretch, we had those penalties. I wanted to get him out there. He sat through the penalties, and then I didn’t get him out there.”
The penalties are the mechanical part of it. Toronto took four of them and McKenna isn’t on the penalty kill, nor does he typically see time at four-on-four or three-on-three, so each one effectively removed him from the game. Kirill Marchenko scored to make it 4-2 in between two of them, and by the time the Leafs were back at full strength the 18-year-old had been sitting for a long while.
“He sat for so long and he sits through the intermission. Probably should’ve gotten him out at the start of the third,” Hiller said. “The big thing is the penalties. I guess it just didn’t happen and that’s on me.”
Was Gavin McKenna benched for his performance?
McKenna arrived at Thursday’s game on a four-game point streak, two goals and three assists across that run, and sitting tied for second in rookie scoring league-wide. He had been one of Toronto’s better forwards through the opening fortnight of the season. Hiller was emphatic that none of that had changed and that the rookie’s play never entered into the decision.
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Asked whether he was concerned about how an 18-year-old would absorb half a game on the bench, Hiller said he always worries about that sort of thing, while describing McKenna as mature enough to let it roll off him. He also said he intends to speak to him about both the decision and how much ice time he should expect going forward.
McKenna wasn’t made available to reporters afterwards.
Marchenko finished with his first NHL hat trick, John Tavares left the game with an apparent injury, and Owen Power scored the overtime winner to hand Toronto a second straight defeat.
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