Where does Gavin McKenna fit with the Leafs?

As far as environments for first-overall picks to walk into go, the Toronto Maple Leafs are far from the worst for Gavin McKenna to end up in.

Sure, the off-ice environment wasn’t great last year. This team dealt with a mire of controversy during a disappointing 2025-26 campaign. This ranged from front-office miscommunications and Auston Matthews’ season-ending injury to William Nylander flipping off an arena camera.

But with a new general manager, head coach and extensively overhauled organization behind them, the drama may be in the rearview mirror in Toronto.

McKenna has found himself in an ideal situation in Toronto. While the Leafs are coming off their worst season in the Matthews’ era, finishing with the fifth-worst record in the league, they appear to be much improved with numerous additions. In come two-way specialists like Nick Paul and Colton Sissons; puck-moving defensemen like Emil Andrae and Darren Raddysh; and don’t forget about workhorse netminder like Sergei Bobrovsky. Are they back to Stanley Cup contention? Who’s to say right now. But they’re certainly much better than last season, and should compete for a playoff spot once again.

What will certainly work for McKenna is the talent he’ll already get to play with. A quick look at some other recent first-overall picks, and you see the disadvantage of talented players going first: they’re joining the worst team. You have to go back to 2022 to find a first-overall pick who’s made the playoffs, and Juraj Slafkovsky is a bit more of a complement to the Montreal Canadiens’ core of Cole Caufield, Lane Hutson and Nick Suzuki. Connor Bedard, Macklin Celebrini and Matthew Schaefer have yet to play in the playoffs, and while the latter two came close last season, both were on the backs of those respective players. Bedard, meanwhile, is entering Year 4 of “who do I have to pass to?”.

McKenna won’t have that problem. He’s joining a fairly talented forward group with the two-way sniper in Matthews, a silky skating playmaker in William Nylander (with a recently-developed scoring touch), the always-persistent John Tavares and the hulking power forward Matthew Knies. He’ll also have plenty of experience to lean on. Both Matthews and Tavares are former first-overall picks, and Tavares also entered the league from the CHL with Exceptional Status. Oh, and they have another first-overall pick on staff this season with Mats Sundin in the role of senior executive advisor of hockey operations. McKenna will be fine there.

“He’s very comfortable in his own skin,” Tavares said at Leafs media day on Wednesday. “He’s had the spotlight on him for a long time, and obviously this will be new and different. This is what he’s been dreaming about, especially in this market and the attention that comes with it. But he’s gonna handle it extremely well.”

The only downside to McKenna coming into a competitive team situation is that there will be expectations if he plays in an important role. It’s easy for the Chicago Blackhawks, San Jose Sharks or New York Islanders in rebuild mode to throw Bedard, Celebrini or Schaefer into the spotlight right away and let them make their mistakes. The Leafs have their sights set on making the playoffs again, and while McKenna certainly helps by providing the team with the playmaking winger they were clearly missing after Mitch Marner’s departure, there’s less room for error. So he’ll need to be deployed properly, in a way that allows him to thrive but not sheltered so much that it hinders his development.

“Our goal is to put him in the best position to succeed while accounting for all the other players on the team that we want to put in the best position to succeed as well,” Leafs head coach Jim Hiller said. “We always know it’s a team and he’s going to be an important part of the team. And you’d be surprised at how much goes into a decision on where a player of that stature starts. There’s always unintended consequences. You have to think about not only that player, but other players.”

So where does McKenna fit into the Leafs lineup? Theoretically, he could start in a sheltered environment on the third line, get acclimated to the NHL game, and build his way up from there. Matthews and Nylander were both on the Leafs’ third line in their rookie seasons 10 years ago, so it’s not out of the ordinary to suggest that. But a player of McKenna’s talents should probably play with players at his level, and that’s going to come in the top six.

Will it be with Matthews? The three-time Rocket Richard winner has been merely mortal the past two seasons hovering around the 30-goal mark, and is in desperate need of a set-up man. There’s no one better suited for that than McKenna. In three WHL seasons, he had 198 assists in 158 regular season and playoff games (1.25 per game), and followed that up with 36 assists in 35 games with Penn State. For comparison, Marner, Matthews’ long-time partner, had 246 assists in 218 regular season and playoff games in the OHL (1.13 per game).

More importantly, McKenna has the smarts to play with and set up Matthews. Playing with the most talented players isn’t as simple as “send the puck in their general direction and they’ll figure out the rest”. You have to be in the right spots to get the puck yourself, and know where your teammate is without even having to look. You have the confidence to draw the opposition towards you, still make the play, and set up your teammate for a wide open chance. And you constantly have to be aware of your game and your opposition, and adapt to the situation. McKenna has that in spades, something he alluded to on Wednesday when asked about his skillset.

“I think my brains is what I want to bring [to the Leafs],” McKenna told Daily Faceoff. “I think it’s going to be an adjustment to the NHL game. I think it’ll take time. But for me, being a smart player, I can try and pick up on those little habits from [Matthews, Nylander, Tavares and Knies] and see what they’re doing and even ask for advice. I think, being a smart person, I can pick up on it quick.”

However, there is one issue playing with Matthews brings: the Leafs’ captain is often given the team’s tough minutes. According to Evolving Hockey’s Quality of Competition data, Matthews ranked first and second among forwards with 500 minutes in terms of quality his opponents’ regularized adjust expected goal plus-minus per 60 minutes. While that extreme usage may have just been one of many aspects where previous head coach Craig Berube failed the Leafs and could see some adjustment under Hiller, he’s still likely to face some level of tough competition, both due to his defensive acumen and his talent demanding the attention of the other team’s shutdown line.

We don’t know how McKenna will perform defensively at the NHL level yet, but it wasn’t a trait praised often in scouting reports. In fact, it was probably the biggest reason why eventual second-overall pick Ivar Stenberg was even in the conversation for the top selection. While NHL comparables like Patrick Kane and Nikita Kucherov bodes well for McKenna’s talent and offensive production, neither player are known for their defensive game. In fact, among the 31 combined NHL seasons between the two wingers, only six saw them have positive defensive impacts.

Then again, Marner also got plenty of Kane comparisons on his way to the NHL, and he’s become one of the game’s best two-way forwards. Maybe McKenna eventually develops that skillset, but it likely won’t be this season.

So if the Leafs would rather wait before throwing McKenna to the matchup wolves with Matthews, maybe the better option is on the Leafs’ other top-six line with Tavares and Nylander. They still get tougher minutes based on teams wanting to shut the duo down, but not quite with the defensive expectations that come with Matthews’ line. And with the additions of defensively-conscious bottom-six forwards like Paul and Sissons, perhaps the Leafs are gearing towards a checking third line to ease the Tavares-Nylander duo even more. If they are sheltered, that may be a better fit for McKenna to get his feet wet at the NHL level.

It’s not quite the traditional sniper/playmaker/forechecker set up you sometimes see with top hockey lines, but if you squint, you can see it. Tavares has become a bit more relentless with his forechecking in recent years to account for his age, and McKenna and Nylander can basically act as hybrids of the sniper/playmaker combination. In fact, that may work better than a pure playmaker/sniper combo of Matthews and McKenna, as it allows Nylander and McKenna to be less predictable in terms of who finishes the play. That predictability was often a foil for the Matthews/Marner combo come playoff time, as teams knew Marner was usually passing and Matthews was usually shooting.

And then there’s the power play. The Leafs could theoretically roll with five forwards, with Matthews, McKenna and Nylander operating at the point and along the half-walls while Tavares acts as a bumper in the slot and Knies creates chaos in front of the net. But with the addition of Raddysh, who brings a commanding slap shot from the blueline that the Leafs have lacked on the man advantage since Dion Phaneuf, it’s hard to see them not putting the 30-year-old on the top unit.

So if Raddysh is taking the point, one of Matthews, McKenna or Nylander would have to adjust to a bumper or net-front role to keep all three on the unit. Matthews briefly flirted with a bumper role on the power play to start the 2019-20 season, and in that same season, Nylander primarily operated in front of the net, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that one of them moves. But both have generally worked on perimeter on the man advantage for most of the decade, so it has been a while since that was their primary role. So maybe McKenna starts as a catalyst for the second unit, and slowly earns a role on the top spot by way of his own play (or an injury).

Regardless, it’s safe to say there is still a lot up in the air as far of the best way for the Leafs to deploy their newest offensive weapon. There are many ways for McKenna to be utilized, but Toronto is going to make sure they deploy him properly and wisely.

“We’re not setting any ceiling on him at all,” Hiller said. “We’re going to let him dictate where he falls. And ultimately, we all know he’s going to be a tremendous player in the league. How quickly does he get there? It’s a development curve for every single player who comes into this league.

“I think we’re set up really well to have the right support around him, and he’s just going to show us where he fits. And we have no doubt that one day he’s going to bring us all our trophies, so we’re just not having that expectation or putting that pressure on him, that he has to do that starting tomorrow when he hits the ice.”

As far as what Hiller had in mind for McKenna’s role, he didn’t show his hand on the first day with the media.

“Let’s have the suspense build and let’s watch tomorrow morning, how about that?” Hiller joked. “If I told you that, everyone might stay home tomorrow.”

Alas, we’ll have to wait another day to see what the answer it.