No one wants cold water thrown on the selection of Gavin McKenna. The Maple Leafs lucked into a perfect situation, and the lineup card will be better in the short and long term because of the addition of McKenna.

The one phrase that gets thrown around a lot is that Gavin McKenna is a replacement for Mitch Marner. In the long term, it’s easy to see the case for it. McKenna is a talented playmaking winger who seems destined for the top line. He might not have Marner’s defensive acumen, but there seems to be an intensity and mean streak that make it an acceptable trade-off. In a perfect world, McKenna is comparable to Nikita Kucherov. It’s fun to dream.

The thing is, no matter who you are comparing Gavin McKenna to, the expectations for his rookie season need to be tempered… a lot. Rookies don’t come into the NHL and put up 100-point seasons. Connor McDavid’s rookie season was shortened, but he put up 48 points in 45 games; by McDavid standards, his 87-point pace is far off what he achieved in the NHL. Matthews might have had 40 goals in his rookie campaign, but he also had 69 points, well off his best numbers.

The players that McKenna is most often compared to didn’t play in the NHL the season following their draft. Mitch Marner went back to junior for a year, and when he joined the Leafs, he had 61 points in his first season, followed by 69 the next.

Nikita Kucherov didn’t play in the NHL until he was 20. In his first season, he had 18 points in 52 games.

Not everyone progresses in the same way, but here are some numbers for other recent forward first overall picks, and you can establish your own range for what is reasonable to expect from McKenna this season.

* Connor Bedard had 61 points in 66 games in his rookie season.
* Macklin Celebrini had 63 points in 70 games in his rookie season.
* Juraj Slafkovsky had 10 points in 39 games, followed by 50 and 51 points in the next two seasons.
* Alexis Lafreniere had 21 points in 56 games.
* Jack Hughes had 21 points in 61 games, and 31 points the next season in 56 games.
* Nico Hischier didn’t play in the NHL immediately, but had 52 points in his rookie season.

Jack Hughes is a great example of why there shouldn’t be a panic button attached to McKenna this season, but also why the Maple Leafs can’t look at Gavin as a surefire top six forward solution for Toronto this year.

There is still a need for a top six forward on the Maple Leafs, and preferably the Maple Leafs are looking at a centre.

This was never about replacing Mitch Marner. The Maple Leafs wanted to move on from Mitch Marner, or at least Marner wanted to move on from them. This is about doing better than a combination of Nicolas Roy, Dakota Joshua, and Matias Maccelli as an attempt to do something different with the Maple Leafs lineup without Marner. Gavin McKenna already allows for something different and exciting, and what they get from him should be viewed as upside on a friendly entry level contract.

A player like Elias Pettersson stands out as a bold attempt to do something different up front. A player like Zach Werenski says it was never about building a better forward group but building a better overall team. The Maple Leafs are still lacking the bona fide veteran star presence they lost when Marner left, and they need to get that back.

Free agency doesn’t offer the Maple Leafs the same opportunities as the trade market does, but it does allow Toronto to retain their assets and upgrade solely with cap space. There are opportunities on the blueline but fewer quality options to upgrade the top six forward group. Players like Viktor Arvidsson, Boone Jenner, and Anders Lee are interesting, but their cap hit and term will determine whether they are true fits.

What seems most likely is that 2026-27 will be another season where Mitch Marner’s offense is missed, not replaced. If the Maple Leafs upgrade other areas, that will be fine. And what seems equally important is that Gavin McKenna enters the league without the expectation of replacing a guy who sits sixth on the Maple Leafs all-time scoring list.