Northern trailblazer: How the Yukon shaped top NHL prospect Gavin McKenna

On a sunny July day in the Yukon, a 17-year-old boy and his younger sister zipped around on a side-by-side, driving through a trail up Haeckel Hill.

After a while, the trees made way for a stunning, mountainous vista. Windmills whipped behind the teens, powering some of the homes below.

As they took in their surroundings, they pointed out the landmarks of Whitehorse below them, including the airport that connects the city with the rest of Canada.

This northern postcard is a world away from the NHL. For the player who most believe will hear his name called first at next year’s entry draft, this is home.

Gavin McKenna is a generational talent who has already written his name in the record books alongside the elite. Only Sidney Crosby and John Tavares were younger than McKenna when they were named Player of the Year in the Canadian Hockey League (CHL), which encompasses the three men’s major junior hockey leagues across the country.

Watching him play this past season for the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League (WHL), McKenna’s creativity and smarts made him stand out from the rest. At times, it felt like his brain was on fast-forward, a step or two ahead of the other players on the ice.

“Gavin is a magician,” Scott Wheeler, a journalist who covers the NHL draft and prospects for The Athletic, said in an interview. “I think that’s the simplest way to describe him. Gavin’s game is all about poise and calm on the puck, and playmaking and feel. He’s just got this incredible sort of magnetism on the ice in terms of the way he sees the puck, the way he sees the game.”

You may be familiar with the magician on the ice. You’ve probably seen the highlight-reel goal he scored with the Tigers this past season, where it looked like he had the puck on a string. But to fully understand Gavin McKenna, you need to know where he comes from.

His people, of the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin First Nation, are from north of here, in the area known to most as Dawson City. Translated to English, they’re the people of the river. As European settlers flocked to the area surrounding the Yukon River during the Gold Rush of the late 1800s, it was the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin people who were displaced from their traditional home.

As he’s grown older, McKenna has learned his family’s history, including that of his grandfather, Joe Mason, who survived Canada’s notorious residential school system that forced Indigenous children to deny their culture and language.

“There was a lot of stuff that he couldn’t do that other people could do, just because he was Indigenous,” McKenna said in an interview with CBC Sports at his family home in Whitehorse this past summer.

That history, what his grandfather and his ancestors before him endured, is something McKenna doesn’t want the world to forget.

At the world junior championships in Ottawa last year, McKenna wore a traditional vest designed by his grandmother to showcase his Indigenous heritage. On the front, there are logos for Hockey Canada and Hockey Yukon, representing different steps in McKenna’s hockey journey. There’s also a design of a moose, which McKenna’s people have hunted over generations. On the back is a wolf. McKenna’s people are part of the wolf clan, one of two clans in the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in culture.

“For me to represent being Indigenous like that on such a big stage, I knew it meant a lot for my family,” McKenna said.

The impact ripples beyond one hockey player and his family. Should McKenna go first overall in next year’s NHL draft, he would be the first Indigenous player to be selected with the top pick. He’d also be the first player from the Yukon to be drafted that high.

“He's breaking barriers,” said Peter Johnston, a family friend and the former Grand Chief of the Council of Yukon First Nations. “He has the confidence and the pride and the understanding.”

This fall, McKenna has joined Penn State to play collegiate hockey after three seasons in Medicine Hat, taking advantage of recent change in NCAA eligibility for CHL players. It’s a decision that shook the hockey world, and could forever transform the road that top prospects take to the NHL. 

To get here, McKenna needed a village behind him.

And eventually, to reach the heights he’ll soon reach, he had to leave that home.

When Krystal Mason and Willy McKenna bought their home in Whitehorse, they looked for flat land. They knew that would be ideal for making ice. They also opted not to finish the basement, knowing it would be a good spot to practise stickhandling.

Both hockey players, the parents wanted to give their children every opportunity to play the game they loved.

Willy spent 40 to 50 hours a winter flooding the backyard rink, usually once in the morning and once at night. It’s where Gavin, along with his sisters, Madison and Kasey, honed their hockey skills.

The deal was that the kids had to put in at least as many hours as it took their father to build the rink. That was no problem for Gavin. It’s where the boy’s creativity came to life, and where he’d try to recreate what he saw his favourite player, Patrick Kane, do on TV the night before.

His parents knew he was talented. They didn’t understand exactly how good their son was until nine-year-old Gavin found himself playing at The Brick Invitational Hockey Tournament, an annual event at the West Edmonton Mall that’s highlighted many future NHL stars over the years.

In that 2017 tournament. McKenna played on a team from British Columbia and put up 11 points in just six games.

“He’s playing against the top kids in North America and he’s standing out,” his mother, Krystal Mason, recalled. “It was like, wow, this is something pretty special.”

That hockey season, Gavin and his family flew out of the Yukon 18 times for hockey. Every practice with the B.C. team required a flight.

The family turned to their community to help fund some of those trips.

“Growing up, I’d go up to people and ask for sponsorships,” Gavin said. “The community of Whitehorse is very giving and caring for their athletes and stuff. They were all willing to help me out where they could.”

One of those first sponsors was Dan Johnson. He’s a former hockey player who grew up with both of McKenna’s parents, and is the president of a telecommunications company in Whitehorse.

“It was pretty evident early on that Gavin was somebody who deserved the opportunity to play a little more and at a higher level,” Johnson said.

The family would try to give a thank you gift to sponsors, whether it was a jersey or framed photograph from the tournament where McKenna was competing.

Johnson, whose young son is a McKenna “super fan,” has kept and framed those early mementos. His son’s bedroom looks like a McKenna museum, filled with autographs and jerseys from the boy’s hero.

As McKenna got older, it became clear that he would need to move away from home to keep growing as a player. It was the same issue his father faced as a young hockey player in Whitehorse, but Willy McKenna didn’t have the money to go south.

Things were different for his son. Gavin, then only 12, moved south to Kelowna, B.C. to play hockey. He stayed with a billet family who knew his parents. 

It wasn’t an easy decision to make.

“It was heartbreaking,” his mother said. “It was hard. The plane ride down was tears the entire time. It was just heartbreaking to have to see him say goodbye to my parents, his sisters, all of our family members. That was really, really difficult.”

Everywhere at home, there were reminders of the missing link in their family. When his mother went to the grocery store, she found herself in tears when she saw raspberries, a favourite snack for her son. At Sunday dinners, a chair was empty.

Things weren’t easy down south for McKenna at first, either. He broke his hand and then, a few weeks later, broke the other one, too.

Most kids would have wanted to come home. Not McKenna.

“To me, it just showed his determination that he was out there to accomplish something and he had goals,” his father said. “Even at 12 years old, that to me said it all.”

“It’s something you just have to do here if you want to go anywhere,” his son said. “All the competition is down south. You’ve got to find a way to push yourself and be in that competitive environment. It’s what I had to do.”

McKenna finished his third season with the Medicine Hat Tigers with 129 points in just 56 games. His team won the WHL championship, and McKenna was named the top major junior hockey player in the country.

Historically, CHL players have been barred from playing U.S. college hockey, due to a small stipend that major junior players receive. In the eyes of the NCAA, that made those players “professional.” But the change to NCAA rules, which kicked in on Aug. 1, has opened a new door.

As recently as halfway through last season, McKenna had no intention of leaving the WHL and Medicine Hat.

“At first, we were like, no, he’s staying in the CHL. Why would we leave?” Willy McKenna said. “Medicine Hat has been such a good community for him. Such a good organization. Such a good coaching staff. Such good billets.”

Conversations with McKenna’s agency, combined with a visit to the campus at Penn State, changed the family’s mind.

Playing in the NCAA will see McKenna compete against older, stronger players. They felt that tougher competition, plus significantly fewer games on the calendar, would help McKenna build out his frame in preparation for the NHL.

According to reporting from ESPN, McKenna could also benefit to the tune of $700,000 US from his name, image and likeness (NIL) package at Penn State, which was reportedly much higher than what other top schools offered. NIL deals allow college athletes to control how their likeness is used and cash in on endorsement deals.

But for McKenna, he said it was a “gut feeling” that Penn State was right for him. The team’s run to the Frozen Four semifinals of the NCAA men’s hockey championship helped, too, as did the prospect of being able to put Penn State on the map. The school didn’t even have a Division I men’s hockey program until 2011.

“I want to pave the path,” McKenna said. “Penn State’s a newer school … I think with me going there, it’ll bring some attention to the school and hopefully it’ll be a huge program.”

The decision leaked out on social media the day before an official announcement on ESPN’s SportsCenter. It blew up far greater than the family could have imagined.

Just like the decision to leave home at 12, choosing college was a difficult choice for McKenna to make. Other top NHL prospects have since followed suit, including Porter Martone and Roger McQueen, who were first-round picks in the 2025 NHL draft.

“It was one of the toughest decisions he’s had to make in his life because it’s almost making a statement to the CHL,” Willy McKenna said. “It’s a possibility that it might be a trend moving forward. We’re very, very confident that it was the best decision for him at this point.”

Wheeler said virtually all of the first, second and third-round picks in the recent draft would have had a similar conversation as McKenna had with his parents, now that there’s a new pathway to develop.

In the future, it could create an ecosystem where top players develop through the CHL at 16, 17 and 18 before heading to the NCAA for older competition and more time in the gym, not to mention the education. 

It sets up McKenna as a trailblazer in a few different ways, Wheeler pointed out. He could be the first player from the Yukon to be taken first overall. He’s the first top prospect to opt for the CHL to NCAA route since the rules changed. And he’s the first big name to choose Penn State, a school that has yet to produce a notable NHLer.

“In taking that major — monumental, I would say — step to college hockey, he now sort of reframes the potential path for a lot of these top prospects into the NHL, and he’s doing it at a program in Penn State that isn’t a traditional superpower in college hockey,” Wheeler said.

It sets up McKenna for what could be a huge year. There’s the opportunity to help guide Penn State to the school’s first NCAA championship in men’s hockey, the chance to redeem Canada’s poor performance at last year’s world juniors by winning gold, and of course, next June, the prospect of hearing his name called first at the NHL draft.

Make no mistake: McKenna wants to be No. 1.

“I want to go first overall,” he said. “That’s my goal.”

There’s one more thing he’d like to accomplish in the near future, and it has nothing to do with how many goals he’ll score or how he’ll stack up against other top prospects.

This item on his to-do list is back at home, where it all began.

For just a few short days in July, Gavin McKenna was in Whitehorse. He was back with his parents, two sisters and family dog and sleeping in his childhood bedroom, almost like he never left.

His bedroom still has a picture of Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews on the wall, lifting the Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks. The shelves are filled with trophies, medals and pucks. The one he’s most proud of is a framed 2022 Role Model of the Year Award from the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin First Nation.

One day, McKenna packed up some of his hockey gear into the car and drove to the Canada Games Centre, the multi-use recreational facility that was built when Whitehorse hosted the 2007 Canada Games.

His older sister, Madison, was coaching at the Council of Yukon First Nations’ annual Centre Ice Hockey Camp, and he planned on surprising the kids. 

“I had a few times where I got to meet some of my idols,” he said. “I think when they’re reaching out to you and taking the time to kind of talk to you, whether it’s just giving you an autograph and taking a picture or whatnot, I want to be that guy. I want the kids to remember me as a good guy who wants to be a good role model for them.”

It’s a rare opportunity for these kids. McKenna is only home a few days a year, the product of not having access to the ice he would need to train all off-season in Whitehorse.

It’s one of the reasons why McKenna, his family and several other community members are working to build a new, privately operated recreational facility that would expand access to ice.

It would give elite players like McKenna and Ottawa Senators forward Dylan Cozens, who is also from Whitehorse, the ability to train and develop at home, and even bring their teammates to the territory. They also envision a facility that would provide more opportunities to a growing women’s and girls’ hockey community.

“This is not just about high-performance athletes,” said Dan Johnson, who is also involved in the rink project. “We do need another ice [surface] so we can expand our registrations, open more spots in hockey camps. The more people we get involved with sport, the better we’re going to be as a community.”

It could someday be home to a junior hockey team or hockey academy, so players like McKenna don’t need to go south and leave their families and homes behind.

The group believes they’re about four years away from the rink becoming reality. They’ve identified the land that could be home to it. Now, they’re trying to find money for a feasibility study.

The project is also a way of giving back to the village that helped McKenna get to where he is now, whether it was words of support or help paying for the many flights out of the territory.

“Gavin knows that he might not be where he is if it wasn’t for the community,” Willy McKenna said. “If we can do something to strengthen the community, make it easier here for athletes in the future, then that’s huge.”

Back on Haeckel Hill, as he looked out at Whitehorse below him, McKenna seemed at ease. It’s here on the land at home where he can hunt, hike and fish, as his ancestors did before him. It's where he can get away from the world.

He dreams of buying property on a lake nearby and building a cabin. He’d have his own fishing boat.

The NHL will take him far away from here. But his success could mean the next hockey star from the North won’t have to go so far away from home at such a young age.

“I love it here,” he said.

Producer: Aaron Dutra | Videography: Camryn Kern | Editors: Patrick Grier, Tony Care