John Tavares says Auston Matthews will be part of the group helping Gavin McKenna adjust as the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft gets ready for his first NHL season in Toronto. Tavares, who has spent the past three weeks living with McKenna, said Wednesday that the 18-year-old will have help from several former first overall picks when the pressure starts to build.
The arrangement already feels personal. McKenna joined the Tavares family at their lakeside summer home in the Muskokas last month, and Tavares said his children have taken to him immediately. He described McKenna as great with the kids and said he has fit in seamlessly with the family, a sign that the relationship is already moving well beyond a simple veteran-young player setup.
That matters because McKenna is about to walk into one of hockey’s hardest markets. He is from Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, far from the spotlight that comes with Toronto, and Tavares made clear that no amount of advice will fully prepare him for the attention until he lives it himself. Matthews, Tavares said, brings a different piece to that support system because he came from Arizona, another nontraditional hockey market, while all four of the Maple Leafs mentors in the group were first overall picks who spent major chunks of their careers with Toronto.
Tavares knows the drill from both ends. He was selected first overall by the New York Islanders in 2009, then spent his own first season living with the family of teammate Doug Weight. He and Aryne have already opened their home to young Toronto players before, including Fraser Minten and Easton Cowan, and the pattern has turned into something larger than hospitality. It has become part of how the Maple Leafs help young players learn what the organization expects before the noise grows louder.
McKenna’s path is still only beginning, which is exactly why the setup matters now. Tavares said the goal is not to script every step for him, but to show him how veterans carry themselves and share their experience when the time is right. Once McKenna moves in for his rookie season, the questions will shift from where he is staying to how he handles being recognized almost everywhere he goes, and Toronto will answer that part on its own.
