The Penn State Nittany Lions will be without Gavin McKenna for the 2026-27 season. With a great crop of freshman talent, who are these names, and can they fill the shoes that McKenna left behind?
It’s not every year that you get a Gavin McKenna-level talent, but what you can do is build an extremely skilled and deep team that plays the right way. I got to ask McKenna what advice he would have for any incoming freshmen switching from junior to the NCAA, and he responded. “Junior, It’s more skilled, and you can kind of make a few more plays, and college is just a bit more straightforward hockey, and you’ve got to find ways to get to the net.” Let’s take a look at the players who will join the Nittany Lions in place of McKenna next season.
All entry years are from CollegeHockeyNews and are subject to change. Players are listed alphabetically by last name.
Shea Busch –Left Winger, Everett Silvertips (WHL)
Busch only played 12 regular-season games, but his goal production was unreal. In those games, he had 13 goals and 18 points.
A fourth-round pick by the Florida Panthers in 2025, Busch played in 16 playoff games in the Silvertips’ WHL championship run and had seven goals and 13 points.
Kale Dach –Center, Calgary Hitmen (WHL)
Dach was a captain in the BCHL for the Sherwood Park Crusaders before making the move to the WHL for one season, where he was named an assistant captain for the Hitmen.
Similar to Busch, Dach is able to put the puck in the back of the net. In 63 games, he had 34 goals and 75 points. In the seven playoff games he appeared in, he had three goals and seven points.
Ryder Fetterolf –Goalie, Ottawa 67’s (OHL)
Fetterolf isn’t the biggest goalie, standing at six-foot, 185 pounds, but the Carolina Hurricanes clearly loved what they saw, which led them to draft him in the fourth round this past June.
Fetterold was unreal in his only OHL season, posting a 29-9-3 record with a 2.07 goals-against-average and a .923 save-percentage.
Pierce Mbuyi –Left Winger, Owen Sound Attack (OHL)
Mbuyi was drafted this past year in the third round by the Pittsburgh Penguins, 86th overall, to be exact. He’s the youngest player on the team and won’t turn 19 until the season is over.
He played two seasons with the Owen Sound Attack, where in his final year he had 32 goals and 75 points in 68 games.
Marco Mignosa –Right Winger, Soo Greyhounds (OHL)
Mignosa was drafted in the seventh round of the 2025 draft by the Tampa Bay Lightning. He was also an assistant captain in his final two seasons with the Greyhounds, where he spent all five years in the OHL.
Mignosa put up 35 goals and 89 points in 65 games, where he also had a plus-minus of plus-27.
Kaden Pitre –Center, North Bay Battalion (OHL)
Pitre, known as a defensive center who was drafted in the sixth round of the 2024 draft by the Tampa Bay Lightning. Although defense is his calling card, he saw more production this past season when he was traded from Flint to North Bay.
In 37 games for the Battalion, he had 13 goals and an even 37 points.
Ethan Weber –Defenseman, Penticton Vees (WHL)
Weber is the only freshman defenseman, and I bet a large part of that has to do with his jump to the WHL.
After having 19 points in the USHL for the Lincoln Stars, Weber stepped into the WHL and lit it up with 14 goals and 51 points in 68 games for the Vees.
