Gavin McKenna hasn't taken an NHL shift yet, and Maple Leafs coach Jim Hiller is already shaping how sheltered his rookie season will be.
With training camps approaching, McKenna arrives in Toronto as the first overall pick, and that label comes with baggage before he's played a single game.
He wasn't drafted first to grind out shifts on the fourth line. McKenna is a top-six winger, full stop, and the Maple Leafs need to treat him that way from day one.
Toronto limped through last season with a 32-36-14 record and finished with a minus-46 goal differential, good for 28th in the league. That's the roster McKenna is stepping into.
Hiller, hired in June, faces a real balancing act. Push McKenna too hard and he gets buried by matchups he isn't ready for. Protect him too much and the Leafs waste a generational talent.
Auston Matthews put up 53 points in 60 games last season, and William Nylander led the team with 79 points. McKenna's job is to make those numbers climb, not chase his own.
If McKenna slots in with Matthews and Matthew Knies on the top line, or lands with John Tavares and Nylander on the second unit, either way he's playing with proven finishers.
Why McKenna's real path to points runs through special teams
Here's where it gets interesting. Hiller has every incentive to lean on McKenna in power-play minutes and keep him away from heavy defensive zone starts.
Think of it like breaking in a young racehorse. You don't run it on a muddy track in its first outing. You give it clean footing and let the talent show itself.
Is it hard to picture McKenna feeding Matthews one-timers on a power play that already produced plenty of offense a year ago? Not really.
There's also a shootout angle nobody talks about enough. A player with McKenna's individual skill in space, alone against a goaltender, can steal points in a tight standings race.
McKenna is still 18. He needed an adjustment period just moving from the WHL to the NCAA last season, and the NHL jump is steeper than that one.
A half-point-per-game pace feels like the fair bar for a rookie playing with this much talent around him. Anything less and questions start piling up on Hiller's usage.
Anything more, and Toronto starts believing it actually landed a franchise cornerstone instead of just a really good prospect. There's a difference, and it matters.
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The bad news-and the dangerous part for the young player-is that the pressure is already enormous.
We tend to think we should give him time, but people are already putting him on a pedestal even though he hasn't even taken his first steps on the ice in the NHL.
Let's hope he's able to handle the pressure well, because it's going to be truly enormous from the very first day of training camp.
Should Jim Hiller shelter Gavin McKenna's minutes as a rookie instead of throwing him into the deep end right away?
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