BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Toronto Maple Leafs selected Gavin McKenna with the No. 1 pick of the 2026 NHL Draft on Friday night.

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Long projected to be the top pick, McKenna brings a much-needed boost of skill, creativity and long-term upside to the Leafs at a time when the franchise is undergoing a major renovation under the new front office led by general manager John Chayka and adviser Mats Sundin.

McKenna, chosen ahead of other potential top-pick candidates Ivar Stenberg and Chase Reid, is the first draft pick by the new regime. Canadian pop star Justin Bieber announced the selection.

The 18-year-old McKenna played for Penn State last season, putting up 51 points in 35 games, the second-best per-game mark in the NCAA. He finished second in WHL scoring the season before that with 129 points for Medicine Hat and then added another 38 points in 16 games during the Tigers’ run to the WHL championship.

A tremendous passer and playmaker with elite vision, including on the power play, McKenna’s upside has been compared to superstar wingers Artemi Panarin and Nikita Kucherov. He has the potential to become a long-term replacement at wing for Mitch Marner, who decamped for the Vegas Golden Knights last summer.

The Leafs opted for McKenna’s superstar ceiling over Stenberg, another skilled winger from Sweden who might be more NHL-ready, and Reid, a right-shooting American defenseman with top-pairing potential.

In the lead-up to his first draft as GM, Chayka said the Leafs would take the player they deemed to be the best available regardless of position.

“For us, it’s about getting the right person,” Chayka said at the draft combine in Buffalo. “In a market like (Toronto), I don’t think we can miss on that.”

After visiting McKenna in his hometown of Whitehorse during the Leafs’ pre-draft preparations, Chayka came away impressed. He described McKenna as a “small-town kid” with “some real resolve around who he is and what his career means to him and his family.

“I find it impressive.”

McKenna is the first No. 1 pick by the Leafs since Auston Matthews in 2016 and only the third in franchise history, following Wendel Clark in 1985.

He could step onto Matthews’ left wing as soon as next season, bringing the kind of daring creativity and passing ability to the Leafs’ attack that was lost in the wake of Marner’s exit.

Whether on a first or second unit, McKenna will play a prominent role as a creator on the power play.

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The degree to which he can impact the Leafs as a teenager next season is obviously unknown.

Macklin Celebrini and Matthew Schaefer, the previous two No. 1 picks, were both huge hits as rookies for the Sharks and Islanders. Connor Bedard, the top pick in 2023, won the Calder Trophy in his first NHL season after posting 61 points in 68 games for the Blackhawks.

Other recent top picks, Juraj Slafkovský and Jack Hughes, needed more time to develop into major contributors for the Canadiens and Devils.

Whatever McKenna can bring the Leafs in the short term, as they attempt to re-enter the playoff mix, will be a bonus — and an unexpected one at that.

It’s the long-term hope he offers the franchise that is most appealing, with Matthews nearing his 29th birthday with only two years remaining on his contract, and William Nylander, the other franchise cornerstone, already 30 years old.

Lacking in premium young talent otherwise, the Leafs have already traded away their first-round pick in the next two drafts.

The thought of McKenna joining them this summer would have been unthinkable not long ago — on the night of the lottery itself, for that matter. But after missing the playoffs in a chaotic and dysfunctional fashion last season, while finishing with the league’s fifth-worst record, the Leafs scored an unlikely lottery win with only 8.5 percent odds.

The pick would have gone to the Boston Bruins — courtesy of a 2025 deadline deal for Brandon Carlo — had it not landed in the top five.

It was an incredible stroke of luck when the Leafs needed it most.

The lottery win came one day after Chayka and Sundin were introduced as the new leaders of the front office.

It has been a momentous few months for the club, to say the least.

The team fired Brad Treliving as GM in March and replaced him with the unlikely tandem of Chayka and Sundin in early May. Craig Berube was dismissed as head coach soon after and ultimately replaced, after a lengthy search, by Jim Hiller.

The Leafs also traded goaltender Joseph Woll for a package that included defenseman Emil Andrae and brought in the potential No. 1 free agent defenseman, Darren Raddysh, on an eight-year, $68 million contract in a sign-and-trade with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

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This article originally appeared in The Athletic.