NHL Draft 2026
- Thread starter herman
- Start date
Guru Tugginmypuddah
Well-known member
You can teach a player to be more responsible on D (except Willy) but hockey smarts is much harder to teach.
Guilt Trip
Well-known member
Willy can do it and has shown it from time to time which makes it worse. He's just flat out lazy and hopefully McKenna takes Matthews' lead.
Bender
Well-known member
Pronman has come out and listed all the D in the same tiering as McKenna and Stenberg. This seems patentedly insane. I find it highly unlikely they are all in the same tier. He also listed "usefulness" essentially as part of the ranking. D and centres are most important, but aren't ranking all about who is the best player now and likely best future player at their position? Smits and Verhoeff have been all over the place in raknings. This just seems to disingenuous to me.
Bender
Well-known member
Very cool. I doubt he becomes only a Lafreniere type. Interesting that he brought up Celebrini. I kind of wonder to what extent each other's teammates/depth played a role as BU seems like a much better team overall. I didn't realize Lane Hutson was also on Celebrini's team!
ZBBM
Well-known member
Because it's really good writing. And good analysis. The tell on that, is that Drain admits when he doesn't know something. And he sets expectations properly. This guy will be a work in progress. Drain's closing — that the Leafs need to get a coach who's right for this kid — has it exactly right.
Taking this from an article at the Athletic, but these were the drafted prospects on McKenna's NCAA team this season:
Jackson Smith - 2025 1st round pick (CBJ)
Charlie Cerrato - 2025 2nd round pick (CAR)
Reese Laubach - 2022 7th round pick (SJ)
Luke Misa - 2024 4th round pick (CGY)
In comparison this is what Celebrini had in his draft year:
Tom Willander - 2023 1st round pick (VAN)
Lane Hutson - 2022 2nd round pick (MTL)
Ryan Greene - 2022 2nd round pick (CHI)
Jack Hughes - 2022 2nd round pick (LAK)
Luke Tuch - 2020 2nd round pick (MTL)
Dylan Peterson - 2020 3rd round pick (STL)
Gavin McCarthy -2023 3rd round pick (BUF)
Devin Kaplan - 2022 3rd round pick (PHI)
Cade Webbe - 2019 4th round pick (CAR)
Shane LaChance - 2021 6th round pick (EDM)
Jack Harvey - 2023 7th round pick (TB)
Aiden Celebrini - 2023 6th round pick (VAN)
It also noted that Adam Fantilli had 8 NHL drafted prospects on his NCAA team, with 4 of them being 1st rounders. Maybe McKenna should have gone to a better, more established program like PSU as the article suggests, but he also made it clear that he went to the NCAA to challenge himself and going to a loaded team doesn't really accomplish that as much (the likely larger NIL offer probably didn't hurt either though).
One thing that I haven't really seen explored much is a comment that McKenna's coach made in an interview with TLN. He said something like this was possibly the toughest/most competitive NCAA season ever so far. The rule change meant that a massive influx of new talent came into the NCAA almost out of no where. According to @MikeMcMahonCHN 16.3% of players committed for the 2025-26 season came from the CHL. Those were all guys presumably taking jobs of, to put it bluntly, worse players.
So I'm not really saying McKenna should be on Celebrini's level (although worth noting even draft-era Celebrini wasn't on current-era Celebrini's level) but McKenna's numbers in the NCAA this season should be looked at while recognizing that he had worse quality of teammates and also likely a tougher overall quality of competition than the typical elite NCAA prospect.
