Ethan MacKenzie: The Leafs' Third-Rounder Canada Couldn't Ignore

Ethan MacKenzie went undrafted twice and made Canada's world junior team anyway

Ethan MacKenzie is the most interesting player the Maple Leafs drafted in 2026 who is not named Gavin McKenna, and the case for that is short: NHL teams passed on him twice, then Hockey Canada put him on a world junior roster, then he put up 58 points as a defenceman. Toronto took him 69th overall. He is now a freshman at the University of North Dakota, and he is already ranked inside the top six of most public Leafs prospect lists.

That is an unusual sequence. Overage defencemen do not typically leapfrog a system's draft picks. MacKenzie did it in a single season, and the reason is worth understanding, because it says something about how Toronto's scouting staff evaluated the 2026 class — and about what the Leafs are short of on the blue line.

The 2025-26 season that changed everything

MacKenzie, a 19-year-old left-shot defenceman from Kelowna, B.C., listed at 6-foot-1 and 187 pounds, spent 2025-26 with the Edmonton Oil Kings of the WHL. He scored 22 goals and added 36 assists for 58 points in 59 games.

Twenty-two goals from a defenceman in junior is a genuine outlier number. For context, most WHL blue-liners who put up 58 points do it with a 10-goal, 48-assist split — the goals come from point shots that find their way through. MacKenzie's production profile is heavier on the shot itself, which is the trait that public scouting reports keep coming back to.

He was passed over in two previous drafts. That matters both ways. It means the raw tools were not obvious to 32 clubs across two summers, which is a real signal. It also means the 2025-26 breakout was a genuine jump rather than a slow linear climb, and jumps at 18 and 19 are the ones development staffs are most interested in.

The world juniors detail

The surprise inclusion on Canada's 2026 World Junior Championship roster was the moment the wider hockey world noticed. MacKenzie was undrafted when he was invited to camp, made the team, and produced a goal and four assists in seven games as Canada took bronze.

Undrafted players making Canada's world junior roster is rare enough that Elite Prospects ran a full explainer on him during the tournament. Five points in seven games at that tournament is not a fluke of usage. It is a defenceman handling the fastest under-20 hockey on earth without looking out of place.

What kind of defenceman he actually is

The scouting picture on MacKenzie is consistent: he is an aggressive, closing defender rather than a passive gap-controller. He steps up on puck reception, finishes checks hard, wins the net-front, and — this is the part that shows up in the video work — never stops scanning. He is constantly repositioning his feet before the puck arrives.

That style comes with the obvious risk. Defencemen who close aggressively get beaten badly when they guess wrong, and at the NHL level the punishment for guessing wrong is a two-on-one. The NCAA is a reasonable place to learn where the line sits, because the competition is older and stronger than junior without the 68-game grind.

Pair the defensive aggression with 22 junior goals and you have a profile that does not neatly fit the categories. He is not a pure shutdown guy and he is not a pure power-play quarterback. He is a defenceman who plays fast in both directions, which is the archetype Jim Hiller's Los Angeles teams leaned on and the archetype Toronto's current blue line is notably short of.

Why North Dakota is the right landing spot

MacKenzie joins the University of North Dakota for 2026-27. It is one of the best development programs in college hockey and it plays a heavy, physical, defensively demanding style that will not indulge a defenceman who over-commits.

The Leafs now have two members of their 2026 class in Grand Forks. Fifth-round pick Cooper Williams also committed to North Dakota — we covered that decision and what the NCAA route means for his rights timeline earlier this month. Having two prospects in the same program is a small organizational efficiency: one development staffer's trip covers both.

The NCAA path also buys Toronto time in a way the club needs. Under current rules, drafted players who go the college route give their NHL team an extended rights window, which means the Leafs are not forced into a signing decision on MacKenzie while the roster is capped out and sitting at 49 of a maximum 50 contracts. You can see the full contract picture on our contracts page.

Where he ranks in the system

The Hockey News placed MacKenzie fifth in its Maple Leafs prospect ranking. The Leafs Nation had him sixth in its 2026-27 organizational list, behind Gavin McKenna at No. 1, Ben Danford at No. 3, Tinus Luc Koblar at No. 4 and Alexander Bilecki at No. 5.

Two things about those placements. First, they are high for a third-round pick two months after the draft, which reflects both the world junior appearance and the fact that Toronto's pool is still thin below its top few names. Second, the blue line is where the pool is deepest right now — Danford, Bilecki and MacKenzie are all defencemen inside the top six, and Danford's push for an NHL job is the most immediate of the three.

That concentration is not an accident. It is what happens when a club spends years trading first-round picks for veteran forwards and then has to restock. The Leafs' pool jumped nine spots in Daily Faceoff's league-wide rankings this summer, and the shape of that jump is more defence-heavy than most fans realize.

The realistic timeline

MacKenzie will play at least two seasons at North Dakota, and probably three. The best-case version is a sophomore year where he runs a power play and plays 22 minutes a night against Big Ten and NCHC competition, followed by a Marlies contract in 2028 or 2029.

At 19 he is not a long-shot teenager — he is close to physically mature and the question is skill refinement rather than growth. The most useful thing to watch in his freshman year is not points. It is whether North Dakota's staff trusts him on the penalty kill by January. Defencemen who kill penalties as college freshmen tend to be defencemen NHL clubs sign.

What's next

North Dakota opens its season in early October. MacKenzie will not be the story in Toronto this fall — training camp opens Sept. 16 and every camera in the city will be pointed at McKenna, at Jim Hiller's first sessions, and at whether Auston Matthews looks like himself again.

But of every player Toronto drafted outside the first round in June, MacKenzie is the one with the clearest path to being worth more than his slot. A 19-year-old defenceman who scored 22 goals in the WHL and held his own at the world juniors, taken 69th, is exactly the kind of bet that separates competent scouting departments from lucky ones. Check the players page for the rest of the organizational depth chart.