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The language used to describe Gavin McKenna’s game often comes straight from the realm of fantasy.
“He’s a unicorn talent. He’s brilliant,” said Craig Button, a senior hockey analyst with TSN and former NHL general manager.
Sometimes known as “McKenna Magic,” the 17-year-old player from Whitehorse and member of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation has been described as a hockey “phenom” and a “generational talent.”
YouTube highlight reels show the teen regularly passing through opponents’ legs and sticks, and ripping it into the net with razor-like precision, garnering comparisons to Sidney Crosby and Jack Hughes. A video of a McKenna goal posted to the Western Hockey League’s (WHL) YouTube 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 from his likely pick as No. 1 in the 2026 NHL draft — to the U.S. And while some celebrate McKenna’s choice, it has sent others within the hockey world reeling.
Thanks to a change in rules that allows Canadian Hockey League (CHL) players to switch between the league and college sports in the U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), McKenna announced this week he’s headed to Pennsylvania State University in the fall, where a cheque of around $1 million Cdn is rumoured to await him.
For the first time since the NCAA has been allowed to pay its student athletes, a high-profile Canadian hockey player is lacing up for a big payday. Seventeen-year-old Gavin McKenna is the latest Canadian Hockey League player to be accepted by the U.S. organization. And as George Maratos reports, it is a big deal for the presumed number-one pick in next year’s NHL draft.
Many fear it could inspire others follow suit, draining the home-grown hockey talent pool Canada is known for, and which helps fill small-city stadiums across the country, rallying communities around the sport.
Some argue that Canadian junior hockey needs to re-evaluate its formula for developing young talent and preparing exceptional players for the NHL.
“We’re disappointed that he’s not coming back,” WHL commissioner Dan Near told CBC News on Wednesday, calling McKenna an “outstanding and exceptional player” who helped the Medicine Hat Tigers win the 2025 WHL Championship.
With the Tigers, coached by Willie Desjardins, McKenna transformed from a promising young talent into the driving force behind Medicine Hat’s ascent, falling just short in this season’s Memorial Cup final.
“For 50 years, we’ve been working within a formula around: what does the best development environment look like to get players to the NHL?” Near said.
He says the league will take a look at that formula, and ways of better selling it. “We’re not just going to sit here with our arms folded,” he said.
Gary Jerome, a hockey dad and uncle to four children in Whitehorse, says he and his family are McKenna fans and applaud the player’s decision, but he also thinks it’s a sign Canada could make some changes.
“Sorry for my language, but it sucks for Canadian hockey because they’re not producing the same qualities as the States are, right? It’s kind of Canada’s loss,” said Jerome, who is no stranger to relocating for hockey.
In 2017, Jerome and his family moved from Fort McPherson, a Gwi’chin First Nation in the Northwest Territories, to Whitehorse so his son Evander, 12, and twin 10-year-old daughters could play competitive hockey. He says the local and federal governments should invest more in small-town sports infrastructure.
Chris Gruben, whose son William plays in the Whitehorse Mustangs with Evander and moved to the city from Inuvik, Nunavut, said that, to him, the important thing is to celebrate “a young Indigenous player really paving the way.”
A ‘young,’ ‘new’ program
McKenna’s choice came down to two U.S. colleges, Michigan State and Penn State, both part of the NCAA’s Division 1 Big 10 teams.
It was “probably the hardest decision he’s ever had to make in his life,” according to his father. Willy McKenna added that the influence his son’s decision could have on the future of hockey in Canada was part of what made it difficult. “It’s a lot to put on a young guy,” he said.
“He feels excited about the Penn State program. It’s young, it’s new,” he said.
The college’s NCAA hockey program is just over a decade old but, under the direction of Canadian former pro Guy Gadowsky, has done a lot to catch up to well-established rivals, including building a $89-million US state-of-the-art facility.
For Penn State, it could mean a better chance at the National Championships — especially with another talented young Canadian recruit, Jackson Smith. The pair aren’t alone in making the hop from CHL to NCAA in the coming year. Keaton Verhoeff, from Saskatchewan, who’s also projected to be a top five NHL draft pick for 2026, committed to the University of North Dakota’s program at the end of May. A handful of others have made the jump, too.
Karen Weaver, the academic director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Collegiate Athletics Certificate Program and an expert on college sports, says NCAA athletes’ relatively new rights to name, image and likeness revenue sharing with schools is making the NCAA even more attractive to recruits like McKenna.
Most of the NCAA revenue share traditionally goes to football players because of the popularity of their sport in the U.S. For a chunk of it to go to a hockey player, “that’s a shift. We don’t know how that’s going to go,” Weaver said.
NCAA hockey investments ‘unsustainable’: WHL official
Chris Peters calls it “the dawning of a new era” in the development of hockey talent in North America, but the YouTube hockey commentator for FloHockey doesn’t think it spells the end of CHL’s success.
“Fewer players will play longer in the CHL, but that doesn’t mean that you still won’t have those top players play there,” Peters said in a recent video.
Near, of the WHL, has his doubts that U.S. colleges’ hefty investments in hockey are going to pay off. “I think Canadians should feel a little threatened right now, amidst all of the geopolitical tensions … that our players are being lured away by a rather unsustainable business model,” Near said.
While he says his league is going to watch closely how the new Canadian NCAA recruits fare in the fall, he says it may not be improvements that are needed at home, but for Canadian junior leagues to better sell their existing programs.
Peters agrees. He says that NCAA players may also choose to go back to the CHL after some time.
“The doom and gloom is misplaced,” he said. “It’s not a death knell. It’s not going to end junior hockey.”
As for McKenna’s fantastical puck skills, they seem bound for greatness no matter where he lands.