Gavin McKenna said Tuesday that his zero-point start through three games in Toronto has already become his welcome to the NHL moment. The 18-year-old said he still believes in himself even as the early slump has drawn notice from the Toronto media.
That is why his first week has become a conversation beyond the scoresheet. McKenna is the first No. 1 draft pick to go scoreless through three games since Alexis Lafreniere, who needed seven games to record a point in 2021, and the comparison has sharpened the attention on how quickly a highly touted teenager gets measured in Toronto.
McKenna did not sound rattled by it. He said he has been through plenty of dry spells before, including a tough start to college last year before he began to settle in. His message was simple: keep going, keep believing, and trust that the first point will come. As he put it, learning from last year and learning from these first few games will be key.
The details of that learning curve are already showing up in his daily work. McKenna has been reviewing each game with John Tavares and watching video of his shifts in one-on-one sessions with Daniel Alfredsson, a sign that the conversation around him is not only public. Behind the noise, he is being asked to process the pace of the league one shift at a time.
Jim Hiller said young players inevitably run into criticism because so much of it reaches them on their phones, making it hard to avoid. Morgan Rielly offered a different view from inside the room, saying McKenna has people around him who have been through being a high pick and pointing to the skill, poise and confidence he shows moving the puck, especially on the half-wall of the power play.
McKenna, though, knows the adjustment is real. He said his 164-pound frame is a challenge in a league with little time and space, and he explained that mistakes in juniors or college can disappear in ways they do not in the NHL. Here, a missed play can turn into a puck back in his own end, a shift in the defensive zone and then a trip to the bench. That is the part of the game he is learning to manage, and the next milestone is obvious: his first NHL point. The question is not whether the pressure is there. It is how quickly he can turn this first lesson into production.
