It was a long three games and one period, but Gavin McKenna finally earned his first career point during the Toronto Maple Leafs' Tuesday night game against the Nashville Predators. The monkey is off his back and now he can move on from having a few goose eggs in his stat line.
It wasn't particularly pretty or impressive or anything remarkable, but most assists aren't. Down 3-0 in the early moments of the second period, after the Leafs experienced a miserable 20 or so minutes of the 25 minutes played already, McKenna made a quick breakout pass to a surging John Tavares and the Leafs former captain and veteran center went tumbling down the ice with a full head of steam to open the scoring for Toronto, and hand McKenna his first career point.
GAVIN MCKENNA HAS HIS FIRST NHL POINT 🙌
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) October 7, 2026
McKenna finds John Tavares who finishes it off for his first goal of the season and the rookie's first career point!#Leafs pic.twitter.com/mMVoJyLtDc
What a nice thing for a landlord to do. Tavares taking McKenna's very simple pass and then storming down the ice to give him the wonderful gift of a first career NHL point.
Gavin McKenna can now move on from the pressure
It is unfortunate but the pressure was piling on McKenna to get this out of the way. With zero points in his first three games -- even if the panic was a little bit overblown since he was still creating scoring chances but none of his linemates were able to put the puck into the back of the net -- there was some heat coming from the fan base. Even media members were diving into the record books and looking at past first-overall picks who didn't score the lights out immediately.
But now, all of that chatter can be a thing of the past. McKenna has his first point and even if it was a very simple play, he can point at his stat line and not see all the zeroes haunting his dreams.
It's not the main point of this goal for the history books, but it is incredibly impressive that Tavares was able to score a goal like this. Earlier in the game, there was a long stretch where the veteran center did not look up to speed -- struggling to keep up with some Predators defenders while on the forecheck and just a step behind some plays when he didn't have the puck.
We guess all he needed was one little pass from McKenna and a little bit of a runway to roll down the ice with ease and pop one into the Nashville net.
At the time of writing, the Leafs are down 3-2 in the second period after William Nylander scored his third goal of the season on the power play.
Add us as a preferred source on Google