NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers forward Gavin McKenna lines up for a face off in the first period of a 5-1 win over the Regina Pats on Sunday at Co-op Place.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
With every passing game playing against the Western Hockey League’s best, Gavin McKenna gets more and more comfortable. After facing one of the best the league has ever seen, he is ready for more.
The 15-year-old forward was in the Medicine Hat Tigers lineup for the 5-1 win Sunday over Connor Bedard and the Regina Pats. Bedard, the presumed first overall pick in the upcoming NHL entry draft, had Regina’s lone goal.
Across the ice, McKenna had two assists. The two are tied together by both being selected first overall in the WHL, Bedard in 2020 and McKenna in 2022. There is a distant family connection through marriage and they have traded text messages with one another, but Sunday was their first match-up against each other.
McKenna says it was a great experience getting to play against Bedard.
“The stuff he does out there, it’s unbelievable,” McKenna said. “Just watching him, it’s a pleasure. You have to have your head on a swivel every time he’s out there because you never know what he’s going to do.”
The admiration goes both ways as Bedard said after Sunday’s loss he has followed McKenna’s career so far and plans to do so in the future.
While McKenna was speaking with the News on Sunday, Bedard and some Pats staff members were walking by and Bedard stopped to embrace the younger player while saying, “Good game, good to see you,” as he walked by.
It wasn’t the only time Bedard acknowledged McKenna, as the Pats star tapped him on his shin pads the first time the two were on the ice together. It was a moment McKenna noticed and one Tigers head coach Willie Desjardins caught as well.
“I don’t know if anybody noticed that when the first time Bedard was on the ice, when he went out and Gavin was just ahead of him, Bedard came up and kind of gave him a tap on the back as like a, ‘Hey I see where you’re going,’ so it was good of Bedard to do that,” Desjardins said.
McKenna also suited up in the Tigers’ 4-2 win Saturday against the Lethbridge Hurricanes. While he wasn’t on the scoresheet in that contest, the Whitehorse product now has eight assists in 11 games at the WHL level.
Both Desjardins and associate coach Joe Frazer were impressed with McKenna’s play over the weekend slate.
“He sees the ice so well and makes lots of good plays,” Desjardins said. “It’s tough, he had some good chances (Saturday) more than (Sunday) to score and didn’t get them. But he’s a young guy and he makes lots of good plays. He’s got a great future ahead of him.
“Some of the plays he makes with the puck, his vision is elite,” Frazer said. “When anyone’s out there with him they have to make sure they’re ready to shoot because nobody else in the building sees the play and he makes a play out of nowhere. He’s got a real bright future and he just gets more and more comfortable every time he plays.”
While he’s close to a point per game, McKenna is still chasing his first WHL goal and had multiple chances throughout the weekend to get that monkey off his back. He says he’s happy as long as the Tigers keep winning but wouldn’t mind seeing the red light go off sooner than later.
“As long as we’re winning in games like tonight, it’s amazing either way, but yeah, a goal would be nice,” McKenna said.
He says his takeaway from the weekend and two more games under his belt is to keep playing his game within the team’s structure.
“Having practised with the Tigers all week helped me learn their structure again,” McKenna said. “It’s just about playing with structure, playing with speed and talking to my linemates off the ice, that helps a lot.”
McKenna says he will remember the sold-out crowd of 6,178 fans at Sunday’s game and looks forward to seeing more games like that in the future.
“I’ve never been in front of the crowd like that,” McKenna said. “It was definitely an experience for sure. They were into it the whole game, which is awesome. Every chance, you’d hear them and sometimes it was hard to hear my teammates, but it was an unbelievable experience.
“I can’t wait to have more of that.”
