Gavin McKenna Is Overrated Compared to Macklin Celebrini and Connor Bedard

Gavin McKenna is supposed to be the next big thing in the NHL. The Toronto Maple Leafs selected him first overall in the 2026 NHL Draft, and the expectations surrounding the 18-year-old have been enormous. There is no question McKenna is talented, but at some point, the hype needs to catch up with reality. Right now, putting McKenna ahead of Macklin Celebrini and Connor Bedard is simply too much.

McKenna has an impressive resume. He dominated junior hockey, went to Penn State and immediately showed that he could play against older competition. He finished his NCAA season with 51 points in 35 games and was one of the youngest players in college hockey. Those are impressive numbers, and they explain why Toronto felt comfortable making him the first pick. But being an incredible prospect and already being better than established NHL stars are two completely different things.

Look at Macklin Celebrini. The former No. 1 overall pick has already shown what he can do against NHL players. Last season, Celebrini scored 45 goals and 70 assists for 115 points in 82 games. That’s not prospect hype. That’s an NHL superstar putting up elite numbers at 20 years old. He also opened the 2026-27 season with five assists in San Jose’s first two games before missing Monday’s game with a lower-body injury.

Then there’s Connor Bedard. Bedard entered the NHL with enormous expectations of his own and has already accumulated 203 points in 219 NHL games. He’s still only 21 years old and has had to carry a huge portion of the attention surrounding the Chicago Blackhawks since being drafted first overall in 2023. His NHL résumé is already substantially longer than McKenna’s.

That’s where the McKenna hype becomes difficult to understand. After his first few NHL games, McKenna had yet to record a point, while his NHL tracking numbers showed zero goals and zero assists through his first two games. Obviously, nobody should judge an 18-year-old based on two or three games. The point is that we shouldn’t do the opposite either and declare him better than players who have already proven themselves at the highest level.

McKenna deserves patience. He’s walking into one of the biggest hockey markets in the world and joining a Toronto team that missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade. That’s an enormous amount of pressure for any teenager. Even McKenna has acknowledged the noise surrounding him and has talked about trying to block it out and simply play hockey.

The funny part is that McKenna doesn’t even need to be better than Celebrini or Bedard for his career to be considered a massive success. If he becomes a legitimate first-line NHL star, Toronto will have made a terrific selection. If he eventually becomes one of the best players in the league, the hype will have been justified. But we’re not there yet.

For now, Celebrini has the strongest argument of the three because he’s already producing at an elite NHL level. Bedard has already established himself as a major NHL star. McKenna has the potential to join them, but potential isn’t production. Calling Gavin McKenna overrated doesn’t mean he’s bad. It means the hockey world should stop treating his ceiling like it’s already his reality.