Leafs’ Tavares invites McKenna under his roof

LAS VEGAS – John Tavares remembers everything being new.

Selected first overall by the New York Islanders at the 2009 NHL draft, the star centre and wide-eyed teenager was experiencing countless never-before-seen moments as he started living out his dream.

The attention. The crowds. The questions. The grind. The adulation. The potential doubts.

The Toronto Maple Leafs veteran, in short, has an inkling of what’s in store for the team’s prized rookie this season. Tavares is now once again looking to pay it forward and make life a little easier for another peach-fuzzed, hockey-playing talent when the puck drops later this month.

The veteran forward’s family will welcome No. 1 overall pick Gavin McKenna into their home after a discussion with new general manager John Chayka as the 18-year-old winger from Whitehorse prepares to navigate his first professional season.

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“I think back when I was in New York (with the Islanders) and I lived with Doug Weight for a couple years … being around his family and himself and what that meant to me,” Tavares, the top pick in 2009, said this week at the NHL/NHLPA player media tour. “You don’t always realize it at the time, but it just opens your eyes to so many different things.

“The amount of attention (McKenna’s) going to receive, hopefully he can come home and can decompress and disconnect … just be part of that family environment.”

Tavares and his teammates endured a disastrous 2025-26 campaign that began with Stanley Cup aspirations before spectacularly careening off a cliff for their first playoff-less spring in a decade.

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“Just how they see things, how they play the game, their perspective on things, experiencing things for the first few times,” Tavares, who finished first on the Maple Leafs with 31 goals and second in points with 79 last season, said of having young players in the family fold. “A lot of fun to see that enthusiasm, that energy, that excitement.

“Full-circle for me to offer that opportunity up.”

McKenna, however, is set for a much different freshman experience in the sport’s biggest market — along with the added variables that come in the social-media age — compared to what Tavares went through.

“That’s why, even more, I felt like offering up the (living arrangement) if it made sense for him and for the organization,” he said. “The attention can be a lot at times, especially just being 18 years old and from a more remote place out in the Yukon.

“You just want him to go out there and enjoy all the great things about being a Maple Leaf.”

Coming off last season at Penn State in the NCAA, McKenna landed in Toronto after the Original Six club beat the odds and won the league’s draft lottery.

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“You just want him to be himself,” Tavares said. “There’s a reason why he is who he is and the position he’s in. Doesn’t have to come in and look to change or do a number of different things. Just come in and try to soak it in.”

Following the McKenna selection at the draft, Chayka and Mats Sundin — a franchise legend also hired in the spring as senior executive adviser of hockey operations — made noise by adding two-time Cup-winning goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and defenceman Darren Raddysh, along with a major renovation to the forward depth.

Tavares, captain and former 69-goal man Auston Matthews, and star winger William Nylander remain in the fold as new head coach Jim Hiller — a Toronto assistant during the Mike Babcock era from 2015 to 2019 — takes over behind the bench.

“You just always have faith that we have a really good nucleus of a team,” Tavares said of how he processed the team’s ugly 2025-26 showing. “Unfortunately, last year just went off the rails for us a little bit. As players, you try to take ownership and understand that we have to just do a much better job.

“And clearly, we weren’t very good, and it’s resulted in a lot of change.”

Tavares believes those moves put Toronto back into the contender column. Time will tell in an extremely tough Atlantic Division.

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“You have to go out there and prove and show it,” he said. “You gotta build it.”

One of those foundation pieces will be found at the Tavares home.

“You’re a rookie once in the NHL,” he said of McKenna. “Just enjoy it, be driven, compete your (butt) off, and have fun with it. There’s going to be ups and downs, but that’s part of the journey, part of learning.

“You get to live your dream.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2026.