Will Gavin McKenna dominate the NCAA? 

When the NCAA announced it would welcome players from the CHL, the options for hockey’s best prospects instantly changed. 

Yet, no change will mean as much as Gavin McKenna leaving the WHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers to join the Penn State Nittany Lions, in the season before he is expected to be taken first overall in the 2026 NHL Draft. 

While McKenna, 17, scored at will in the WHL, netting 41 goals and 129 points in 56 games with Medicine Hat in 2024-25, he will face a new challenge against older and more experienced players in college hockey. 

On the latest episode of Daily Faceoff Live, prospect analyst Steven Ellis joined Tyler Yaremchuk and Colby Cohen to break down expectations and outlook for McKenna. 

Yaremchuk: Let’s start with Gavin McKenna. It was at the point where he was kind of looking too good for the CHL. How do you think his game adjusts over to the NCAA, and is he going to be just as dominant?

Ellis: You look at the fact that if he went back to the WHL, he would have put up 190-200 points easily, and Medicine Hat is still going to be a good team next year. So, going to college was the right move. 

Going to Penn State, a team that’s clearly putting a lot of money behind their program, and trying to be such a competitive team with such a really good class coming in, guys like Jackson Smith and Luke Misa and Charlie Cerrato, there’s just a ton of talented players there.

I do expect him to put up numbers, maybe similar to what we saw from Macklin Celebrini. It’s going to be a bit of a different jump, but when you look at McKenna, he’s maybe not the strongest player we’ve ever seen in the world, but at the same time, he’s got the skill. He’s so smart that he can overthink people. So I have no question about whether he’s going to go out there and be able to dominate the NCAA and be one of the best players.

You can watch the complete McKenna discussion and the rest of the latest episode here…