BUFFALO, N.Y. — Gavin McKenna’s nerves finally eased when lifelong Toronto Maple Leafs fan and international pop icon Justin Bieber took the NHL draft stage Friday night to announce the player the team would take with the overall No. 1 pick.
“He was looking at me, and I kind of was thinking, ‘Maybe,'” McKenna said with a laugh. “Crazy. Just crazy what’s going on right now.”
With most of Yukon watching and a loud presence of Maple Leafs fans in the stands, Toronto chose the Penn State left winger, validating longstanding projections of McKenna being his age group’s top prospect. The 18-year-old from Yukon’s capital of Whitehorse has been a prolific scorer on both sides of the border — both in his native Canada and the United States.
And if Bieber’s appearance and taking the stage to his song “Yukon” wasn’t enough, McKenna was welcomed to the Maple Leafs with a video message from team captain Auston Matthews.
“Obviously he’s on the first line. I’m going to have to prove myself to be able to play with a player like that. But that’s my goal,” McKenna said of Matthews, who was chosen No. 1 by Toronto in the 2016 draft, which also happened to be held in Buffalo. “My game’s obviously a playmaker, he’s a shooter, so I think we could complement each other pretty well.”
McKenna represents a major plank in the Maple Leafs’ rebuilding process of a team in transition under new general manager John Chayka. Toronto finished last in the Atlantic Division last season and missed the playoffs for the first time since Matthews’ arrival.
The draft featured dueling cheers — and boos — between large contingents of fans for the Maple Leafs and the hometown Buffalo Sabres, several surprises, nine trades and a poignant father-son moment when the Vancouver Canucks selected center Caleb Malhotra with the No. 3 pick, allowing him to join the team that recently hired his father, Manny Malhotra, as its new head coach.
“I hugged him right after, and we were happy,” said Caleb, who is from British Columbia and finished second among Ontario Hockey League rookies last season with 84 points while playing for the Brantford Bulldogs. “It’s the best feeling in the world. I’ve never felt anything like this. And that embrace was so comforting, and I’m so glad he’s here with me as dad.”
Malhotra said his dad was not aware of the Canucks’ draft plans. And he now has bragging rights on his father in being selected four spots higher; Manny went No. 7 to the New York Rangers in 1998.
After forwards went with the first three picks Friday, including Sweden’s Ivar Stenberg second to the San Jose Sharks, the expected run on defensemen began with five selected over the next six picks and 10 overall in the first round.
Buffalo selected Prince Albert blue-liner Daxon Rudolph at No. 4, followed by Latvia’s Alberts Smits going fifth to the Rangers. Chase Reid, who is from Michigan, was part of that run, going seventh to the Seattle Kraken as the first player selected Friday who was born in the U.S.
Smits split last season playing professionally in Finland and Germany while also representing Latvia at the Milan Cortina Olympics. He became the highest-drafted Latvian player in NHL history, ahead of Buffalo selecting Zemgus Girgensons 14th in 2012.
This was a much more active first round with picks traded for NHL players than the previous couple of years. The Rangers got Pavel Dorofeyev from the Vegas Golden Knights for picks 26 and 92, and a 2028 first-rounder. The Boston Bruins acquired JJ Peterka from the Utah Mammoth for a pair of first-rounders. And the St. Louis Blues traded two of their picks Friday night to the Anaheim Ducks for Mason McTavish.
The selections featured an international flavor with 10 Canadians, seven Swedes and six Americans chosen. The first round ended with the Ottawa Senators selecting forward Jaxon Cover, who was born in Miami, raised on Grand Cayman where he played roller hockey, and developed his hockey skills in Toronto.
Rudolph was wowed watching his good friend McKenna being welcomed to the stage.
“To see him be selected first and with Justin Bieber and everything, it was amazing,” Rudolph said. “I just remember talking to my mom and saying, ‘Wow, this is so cool,’ as I’m sitting there on the couch waiting to be picked.”
McKenna is accustomed to the spotlight, splashing on the scene by combining for 79 goals and 244 points in 133 games with Medicine Hat in the Western Hockey League. He made the jump to the NCAA last summer in a bid to challenge himself against older and more physical competition. He finished with 51 points, tied for fourth in the nation.
He became just the fifth NCAA player to go first, and third in six years, since Michigan defenseman Owen Power went No. 1 to Buffalo in 2021.
McKenna also became the fifth Yukon-born player to be selected in the draft, and the highest pick after Ottawa’s Dylan Cozens went No. 7 to Buffalo in 2019. He now heads to a metropolis that is nearly 100 times larger than Whitehorse’s population of some 39,000.
This was the NHL’s second straight decentralized draft, with teams making selections from their respective headquarters.
Lacking in the new format is each draft pick joining his new team’s front office on stage. Last year, the NHL attempted to rectify that by having teams welcome their prospects by video conference call on stage at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. The interviews were widely panned for being awkward and glitchy, as well as contributing to the draft lasting nearly 4 1/2 hours.
This year the NHL had the top prospects seated with their families in what resembled a lounge area, featuring plush couches, directly in front of the stage. After being selected, each player was interviewed on a couch on stage, with the backdrop representing the team in a first round that took close to four hours to complete.