The language used to describe the Gavin Mckenna game often comes directly from the kingdom of fantasy.
“It is a unicorn talent. It is brilliant,” said Craig Button, senior hockey analyst with TSN and former NHL general manager.
Sometimes known as “McKenna Magic”, Whitehorse’s 17 -year -old player and a member of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation has been described as a “hockey phenomenon” and a “generational talent.”
The outstanding Youtube reels show that the adolescent passed regularly through the legs and sticks of the opponents, and dragged it to the network with precision similar to the razor knife, obtaining comparisons with Sidney Crosby and Jack Hughes. A video of a McKenna goal published on the YouTube of the Western Hockey League (WHL) in April is titled: “Gavin McKenna is not human.”
After three seasons with the Medicine Hat Tigers, Canada is losing one of its best young players, a year of its probable selection as No. 1 in the NHL 2026 draft, to the United States and, while some celebrate the choice of McKenna, has sent others within the drum of the hockey world.
Thanks to a change in the rules that allow the players of the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) to change between the League and the University Sports in the National Association of Collegiate Athletics (NCAA) of the United States, McKenna announced this week that it is directed to the State University of Pennsylvania in the fall, where a control of around $ 1 million of CDN is rumored.
For the first time since the NCAA has been allowed to pay its athletes, a high -profile Canadian hockey player is tied for a large payment day. Gavin McKenna, seventeen, is the last player of the Canadian Hockey League that is accepted by the US organization. And as George Marratas reports, it is a big problem for the alleged number one selection in the NHL draft next year.
Many fear that they can inspire others to do the same, draining local hockey talent by which the hockey group is known, and what helps fill stages of small cities throughout the country, gathering communities in all sport.
Some argue that Canadian junior hockey needs to reassess its formula to develop young talents and prepare exceptional players for NHL.
“We are disappointed not to return,” said the Whl Commissioner Dan Near to CBC News on Wednesday, calling McKenna an “outstanding and exceptional player” who helped Hat Medicine’s Tigers win the WHL 2025 championship.
With the Tigers, trained by Willie Desjardins, McKenna became a young promising talent in the driving force behind the rise of Medicine Hat, being short in the final of the Memorial Cup this season.
“For 50 years, we have been working within a formula around: how is the best development environment to bring players to the NHL?” He said nearby.
He says that the League will take a look at that formula and ways to sell it better. “We are not only going to sit here with bending arms,” he said.
Gary Jerome, a hockey father and four children’s uncle in Whitehorse, says that he and his family are fans of McKenna and applaud the player’s decision, but also believes that it is a sign that Canada could make some changes.
“Sorry for my language, but stinks for Canadian hockey because they are not producing the same qualities as states, right? It is a kind of loss of Canada,” said Jerome, which is not alien to relocating to hockey.
In 2017, Jerome and his family moved from Fort McPherson, a first Nation of Gwi’chin in the Northwest territories, Whitehorse so that his son Evander, 12, and 10 -year -old twin daughters could play competitive hockey. He says that local and federal governments should invest more in small town sports infrastructure.
Chris Gruben, whose son William plays at the Mustangs Whitehorse with Evander and moved to the city from INUVIK, Nunavut, said that, for him, the important thing is to celebrate “a young indigenous player who really allane the way.”
A ‘young’ ‘new’ program
McKenna’s choice was reduced to two American universities, Michigan State and Penn State, both part of the great teams of Division 1 of the NCAA.
It was “probably the most difficult decision you had to take in your life,” according to his father. Willy McKenna added that the influence of her son’s decision could have in the future of hockey in Canada was part of what made it difficult. “It’s a lot to get a young boy,” he said.
“He feels excited about the Penn State program. It’s young, it’s new,” he said.
The University’s NCAA hockey program has just over a decade, but, under the direction of former Canadian professional Guy Gadowsky, has done a lot to reach well -established rivals, including the construction of an avant -garde installation of $ 89 million in the United States.
For Penn State, it could mean a better opportunity in the National Championship, especially with another talented Canadian recruit, Jackson Smith. The couple is not alone to make the jump from Chl to the NCAA in the next year. Keaton Verhoeff, by Saskatchewan, who is also projected to be one of the five best NHL Draft teams for 2026, committed to the North Dakota University program at the end of May. A handful of others have also made the leap.
Karen Weaver, academic director of the Collegiate Athletics Certificate Program of the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in university sports, says the relatively new rights of the NCAA athletes for the exchange of income by name, image and likeness with schools is making the NCAA even more attractive for recruits such as McKenna.
The majority of NCAA’s revenues traditionally share football players due to the popularity of their sport in the United States so that a part of it is for a hockey player, “that is a change. We do not know how it will go,” said Weaver.
Hockey investments of the ‘unsustainable’ NCAA: Official
Chris Peters calls him “the dawn of a new era” in the development of hockey talent in North America, but YouTube hockey commentator for Flohockey does not believe that the end of Chl’s success.
“Less players will play more time in the CHL, but that does not mean that they still do not make those best players play there,” Peters said in a recent video.
Nearby of the WHL, he has its doubts that the strong investments of American universities in Hockey are worth it. “I think Canadians should feel a bit threatened at this time, in the midst of all geopolitical tensions … that our players are being attracted to a fairly unsustainable business model,” said Near.
While he says that his league will see closely how they are going to the new Canadian recruits of the NCAA in the fall, he says that it may not be improvements that are needed at home, but for the Canadian Junior Leagues to sell their existing programs better.
Peters agrees. He says that NCAA players can also choose to return to CHL after a while.
“Fatality and gloom are out of place,” he said. “It is not shit. It will not end the junior hockey.”
As for McKenna’s fantastic disk skills, they seem destined for greatness no matter where to land.
