When is it OK to start worrying about a top prospect in their draft year? Normally, November is not the time for those concerns to surface. But the questions can certainly start.

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That is essentially what is happening with Gavin McKenna right now. You may be wondering why there’s any handwringing at all over a 17-year-old freshman with 14 points in 12 NCAA games. And I get it.

The overwhelming evidence is that McKenna is an elite offensive talent with incredible upside. That has not changed. He is still the player that had 129 points in 56 games last season and seemingly had a point on a nightly basis as a junior player. He had dominated the junior ranks enough to suggest that a new challenge was needed.

That new challenge has been… well, a challenge. And ultimately that is a good thing for McKenna. Time and space is harder to come by, players are bigger and stronger. That’s a development plus, but McKenna also still has to prove that everything he did in junior is translatable to not just college, but the NHL. So far, at five-on-five, his style of play has not translated in the way people thought it should.

Of McKenna’s 14 points this year, nine of have come on the power play, one has come at 4-on-4. All the points count and every goal scored or created matters, however, few of McKenna’s elite peers in recent years in the NCAA have been so reliant on the man advantage for point creation.

When talking about top prospects that have played college hockey in recent years, those that had similar hype and pre-college pedigree have vastly outperformed what McKenna is doing this season.

Adam Fantilli had 23 points in hist first 12 collegiate games. Macklin Celebrini, who was several months younger than McKenna, as a freshman had 22 points. Jack Eichel had 21 points. All three of them won the Hobey Baker as freshmen. Additionally, no more than a quarter of their points scored to that point came on the power play, where has 64% of McKenna’s points have come on the advantage.

McKenna’s season has resembled James Hagens’ NCAA season much more closely than that of the players that went No. 1 or No. 2 in their respective draft years.

Last season, Hagens came into the 2025 NHL Draft campaign as the presumed No. 1 pick. He had two elite linemates in Ryan Leonard and Gabe Perreault, who were first-round NHL Draft picks. He had 15 points in 12 games, just one more than McKenna has now, however only 13% of those points came on the power play. 

Hagens, who had historic numbers himself the year before his draft season, slipped to seventh overall.

As of right now, McKenna is on pace for 44 points in a 40-game season. That would end up better than Hagens’ 37 last year, but woefully short of the production that Fantilli, Celebrini and Eichel had. McKenna was expected to match or surpass those players based on Penn State’s early-season schedule and the player’s own offensive acumen.

So when is it OK to be concerned about McKenna’s status as No. 1?

Not yet. 

Perhaps the evidence is mounting that things are not going as smoothly as hoped – because they aren’t. Perhaps the expectations were too lofty – they weren’t. But it is not yet time to hit the panic button.

Part of the reason? Unlike when Hagens slipped in his draft year, other draft-eligible players surged when he faltered. That has not been the case as obviously with this draft class.

There are definitely players that have had strong seasons, but have they been strong enough to ignore McKenna’s total body of work? Not for me, not yet. 

I will say players like Ethan Belchetz and Ivar Stenberg have elevated their games to a certain degree. Keaton Verhoeff has played well enough to stay in contention as a legitimate McKenna challenger. But I don’t think any one of them has provided enough to say they are No. 1 over McKenna when considering the totality of the picture.

The Nittany Lions have four games before an especially long holiday break – which will be mostly filled for McKenna with Canada’s training camp and the World Junior Championship.

Penn State has Michigan at home Friday and Saturday and then they’re at Minnesota the following weekend. After that, the Nittany Lions will not play again until Jan. 3 at RIT (on FloHockey). McKenna will surely be absent for that RIT series while at the WJC, barring a third-straight quarterfinal exit.

The cracks in Hagens’ No. 1 status didn’t really start to appear until late November. Matthew Schaefer had a monumental performance at the CHL USA Prospects Challenge where he imposed his will enough to suggest he was the real deal. That event for this year's class is two weeks away.

Schaefer started the momentum there and maintained it through his injury while no one was able to supplant him from the lofty position after he had secured it through four periods at the World Juniors where he was clearly the best player on Team Canada.

The WJC is going to have to be McKenna’s coming out party for the season. Canada should be favored to win it all and McKenna can be a real driver for that team with so many players absent due to being in the NHL. This is going to be more his team than last year’s was. 

Anything less than a dominant performance at that tournament, which has a fairly shallow field of contenders this year, will create louder and more frequent questions about his status as No. 1.

Until then, we still remember his exceptional junior season in 2024-25, we remember that he is 17 playing in one of the toughest fields the NCAA has ever seen, and we wait. It is absolutely fair to question where this is going right now, but there's also plenty of reason to believe that a breakout could be forthcoming. 

What we have seen so far has not been encouraging in a 12-game sample, but it's only 12 games. But there’s a long, long way to go before we can make too many definitive statements.

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