The Box Score Buried Gavin McKenna's Debut. The Chances Didn't.
By Ashkon Baharlou
Gavin McKenna played his first NHL game Tuesday night, and the box score will tell you it was a disappointment: no points, a minus-2 rating, one shot on goal in a 3-2 loss to Montreal at Scotiabank Arena. He said so himself after the game. "My game wasn't great, and I had a couple turnovers."
The box score misses what matters. Here is what the Whiteboard's tracking of the game shows.
The debut, in brief: McKenna, the first-overall pick of the June draft, skated 15:19 of official ice time on Toronto's second line at left wing with John Tavares and William Nylander, plus 3.2 minutes on the second power-play unit. He finished with no goals, no assists, and a minus-2 rating.
The context: McKenna is 18. Tuesday was his first NHL game.
What the coach asked of him: Five of McKenna's six faceoff starts at 5-on-5 came in the offensive zone. Second line, second power play, sheltered minutes. The job was to generate offense.
What the Whiteboard saw: A split decision. By chance quality, McKenna held his own. Toronto generated 0.79 expected goals at 5-on-5 with him on the ice and allowed 0.77, a 51 percent on-ice share of expected goals. By volume, he got buried: Toronto took only 9 of the 26 shot attempts with him out there, a 35 percent attempt share, the lowest of any Toronto forward outside the fourth line. Montreal fired more often when he was on the ice, but from nowhere dangerous enough to win the expected-goals count.
His own offense was one play. His only shot attempt at 5-on-5 was a high-danger rebound that reached the goalie, worth 0.21 individual expected goals, which was his entire individual total for the night. His power-play time produced one attempt that never reached the net. He committed two giveaways, one in his own zone.
The line around him: Tavares generated 0.89 individual expected goals, the most of any player in the game, with an assist and a 56 percent on-ice share. Nylander scored twice on 0.49 individual expected goals at a 42 percent share. McKenna's 51 percent on-ice share sat between his two linemates. The kid kept up with the chance flow of a line that produced all night.
The reframe: The headlines this morning say disappointing. I get it. Zero points, minus-2, and he told the cameras his game wasn't great. But a minus-2 on a night your line generates chances at an even rate is noise, not a verdict. What Tuesday actually showed: an 18-year-old got the sheltered offensive role, didn't get caved where it counts, and put his one look from the high-danger area on net. That's a fine debut. It's just not a four-goal debut.
The verdict: The debut was fine. The real risk is the volume. A 35 percent attempt share means Montreal owned the puck with him out there, and less time and space, in his own words, is the adjustment every rookie faces. If that share climbs as the game slows down for him, the points come with it. The hands showed up once, from the slot, on net. If it doesn't climb, the shelter gets harder to justify.
One more thing the model will tell you: the Whiteboard has no rating for McKenna yet. He has no NHL history, so he skates at the model's 40th-percentile default until his own numbers build up. Every shift from here is data.
He gets his bounce-back tonight. Same lines, the Islanders in town, and by his own account he is glad for it. "I'm looking forward to playing again tomorrow." Watch the attempt share, not the box score.
Check the work. Open the Whiteboard, the free line tool I built, and pull up McKenna's card as the season fills it in. Build tonight's Toronto lineup yourself and see where the model slots an 18-year-old with one game of data.
McKenna's on-ice numbers from the Last Change Hockey Whiteboard's shift-corrected tracking of Toronto vs Montreal, September 29, 2026, built on the NHL's play-by-play and shift data. Official scoring (15:19 ice time, minus-2) from the NHL. Draft, Matthews-parallel, and Cup-prediction background from NHL.com and Athlon Sports reporting.
Follow @lastchangehockey on Instagram for more Whiteboard breakdowns.