Gavin McKenna Debut Ends 4-1. The Scoresheet Missed the Point

The Gavin McKenna debut ended in a 4-1 loss and told us plenty anyway

The Gavin McKenna debut is in the books. Montreal beat Toronto 4-1 at Scotiabank Arena on Saturday night in one half of a split-squad doubleheader that opened the NHL pre-season, and the No. 1 pick of the 2026 draft finished with three shots on goal, no points and a minus-1. One outlet clocked his ice time at 19:13, fifth among Toronto forwards. That is the whole scoresheet. It is also close to the least interesting thing about the night.

McKenna played left wing on a line with John Tavares at centre and William Nylander on the right, the trio Jim Hiller assembled on the first morning of camp and has not broken up since. He was on the ice for the opening faceoff — a detail he was still turning over afterward. McKenna told reporters the starting-lineup call was "pretty cool," and pointed to the group he was standing beside: Auston Matthews, Matthew Knies, Tavares.

Eighteen-year-olds who go first overall get graded on a curve that is far too generous in one direction and far too cruel in the other. The useful version sits in between. Toronto did not learn on Saturday whether McKenna is ready. It learned what he looks like when the other team is trying.

Three shots, no points, and the parts that actually held up

Nineteen minutes is a real workload. It is more than a coach hands a rookie he is trying to protect, and the deployment lines up with what Hiller has said all week: get him out there, let him feel the speed, stop managing the narrative. McKenna was not sheltered into offensive-zone starts against Montreal's fourth line. He saw David Reinbacher, who had the best defensive night of anyone in the building and made Toronto's skill group look ordinary for long stretches.

Three shots on goal from a debuting winger is a fine number. It means he was getting to places where shooting was an option rather than circling the perimeter waiting for the game to slow down. The minus-1 is noise — plus-minus in a September split-squad game with six goals in it is not evidence of anything.

What did not show up was a finished play. No points, no assist on a chance that converted, no moment where the building stood up. There was creativity in traffic, the quality Tavares singled out after the first practice of camp, but it did not turn into a goal. In a 60-minute pre-season game against a team that dressed most of its NHL roster, that is a normal outcome, not a warning.

Toronto's top group got handled, and that is the bigger story

Strip McKenna out of it and the Leafs still lost this game 4-1 with Matthews, Nylander, Knies and Tavares dressed. Phillip Danault scored twice for Montreal. Maksymilian Szuber got the third-period winner. Samuel Poulin added the fourth. Toronto's only goal came from Darren Raddysh, who scored in his first game as a Maple Leaf after arriving from Tampa Bay this summer.

Toronto put 24 shots on Samuel Montembeault and Kaapo Kahkonen combined and generated one goal, and it came from a defenceman. That is the pattern the Leafs have been trying to break since last spring. A power play Toronto spent the summer rebuilding and a top six that went quiet in the biggest moments are the two reasons this roster got taken apart. Seeing the same silhouette in game one of the pre-season is not a crisis. It is a reminder of what the exhibition schedule is for.

Raddysh's goal is the small bright spot worth logging. He was brought in to shoot from the blue line and to give the power play a right-handed option it did not have, and Hiller has paired him with Oliver Ekman-Larsson rather than Jake McCabe. His first touch on the scoresheet came in the first game. That is the version of this signing Toronto paid for.

Bobrovsky and Stolarz split the crease

Sergei Bobrovsky made his Maple Leafs debut and stopped 10 of the 11 shots he faced before handing off to Anthony Stolarz midway through the game. Stolarz finished with 15 saves and wore three of Montreal's four goals. Neither goaltender was the problem; neither was asked to steal anything.

Bobrovsky signed a three-year, $21-million contract on July 1 at a $7-million cap hit, and the plan was never for him to play 60 minutes in September. Half a game, low volume, clean structure. He is 37. The Leafs are budgeting his workload from the first night of the exhibition schedule, which tells you how they intend to budget it in January.

The more interesting thread is the one underneath. Stolarz came in cold, faced more rubber and gave up three. That is not a referendum, but the Toronto crease this season is a two-man arrangement with an unresolved hierarchy, and every one of these splits is a data point. Check the contracts page for what both goaltenders are earning while that gets sorted.

What Hiller actually wanted out of the night

Hiller has been consistent since camp opened about speed and about not overloading the rookie. McKenna started the game on the second power-play unit rather than the first, a decision the coach framed as protection rather than demotion: the Leafs have enough established scorers that an 18-year-old does not need to carry a unit in September.

That framing holds up against the deployment. You do not give a player you are protecting 19 minutes at even strength against the other team's best defence pair. Hiller is doing the opposite of hiding him — he is hiding him only from the one situation where the expectations get loudest.

There is also the nine-game question hanging over all of this. Toronto can play McKenna up to nine regular-season games before his entry-level deal burns a year, and that clock is the single largest decision on Chayka's desk before late October. Nothing Saturday moved it either way, which is roughly what a first pre-season game should do.

The other half of the doubleheader went better

While the stars were losing at home, Toronto's depth group pushed Montreal to overtime at the Bell Centre before falling 4-3 on a Cole Caufield goal with 38 seconds left in the extra period. Henrik Rybinski had a goal and an assist, Colton Sissons scored in his Leafs debut by deflecting an Ekman-Larsson shot, and Marc Johnstone briefly put Toronto ahead 3-2 in the second.

Artur Akhtyamov made 13 saves on 15 shots before Samuel Hlavaj came on and stopped 13 more. Lane Hutson finished with a goal and two assists for Montreal, including the equalizer early in the third.

Two split-squad losses to the same opponent on the same night is not a pleasant line in the standings, and pre-season results do not go in the standings anyway. But the B group generating three goals against a Montreal lineup carrying Nick Suzuki and Caufield, while the A group managed one, is the kind of inversion that gets noticed inside a coaching staff.

What's next

Toronto has exactly two pre-season games left and both are on Sept. 23, another split-squad night against Ottawa with one game at Canadian Tire Centre and one at Scotiabank Arena. Every roster question — the third-line wing, the seventh defenceman, Nick Blankenburg's PTO, whether Easton Cowan opens in the NHL — gets settled on that one night and in practice afterward.

The 23-man, cap-compliant roster is due to the league by 5 p.m. ET on Sept. 28. The regular season opens the next night, Sept. 29, against Montreal. McKenna will get two more looks at most before the games count.

The honest read on Saturday: he belonged, he did not dominate, and nobody in the organization expected him to. The gap between those first two things is the whole season. See the full roster breakdown for where the rest of the lineup sits heading into the final week of camp.