Tavares has opened the door to other Maple Leafs in the past, a tradition he continues to pay forward from his rookie days.
John Tavares has done this before. The breakfasts. The early alarms. The spare bedroom. The quiet conversations on the drive to the rink.
On Wednesday, at the NHL’s player media tour, Tavares made it official: Gavin McKenna, the Maple Leafs’ first-overall pick in June, will live with him and his family this season, telling reporters including The Hockey News’ Michael Traikos.
Tavares has hosted younger players at his home before Matthew Knies was first. When the Minnesota product signed out of school in April 2023 and jumped straight into a playoff series, texts came in from Matthews and Mitch Marner offering a spare room. Tavares’ arrived first. Knies took the basement. He stayed through the following season.
Fraser Minten followed in the fall of 2023. The second-rounder had just cracked the opening-night roster. A hotel near Scotiabank Arena is the usual first stop for a kid whose roster spot is not guaranteed. Tavares pulled him out of it.
Tavares went into further detail with Traikos about how things came together.
"You don't always realize it at the time, but it just opens your eyes to so many different things and the impact that it had on me. And I think I really enjoy that opportunity and that mentorship type of aspect," Tavares said. "I think just the benefit he'll get just being around a family and also sometimes, obviously, the amount of attention he's going to receive. I think hopefully when he can come home, he can kind of decompress and disconnect and just be part of that family environment, I think, can be really beneficial.
Tavares continue about his impressions of McKenna.
"He's an unbelievable kid. I've been very impressed with how well he carries himself. And, yeah, I always say, too, it's a lot of benefit for me as well. I think I talked about, you know, kind of living through it for his eyes again. I really enjoy, you know, whether it was Easton (Cowan) last year and now Gavin this year, even when Nisey (Matthew Knies) came on board, just how they see things, how they play the game, their perspective on things, experiencing things for the first few times, and just a lot of fun to see that enthusiasm, that energy, that excitement. Yeah, just full circle for me to offer that opportunity up. So I told John (Maple Leafs GM John Chayka) that if whatever they decide to do, just that I kind of threw my hat in the ring, I guess, so to speak, that we'd be more than willing to have him and worked out that, yeah, he's going to stay with me and my family."
Minten, before a game against Chicago offered the scouting report from the kitchen:
Tavares’ boys loved the company. The two rookies ended up on a line together. The hockey and the living arrangement fed each other. That was the point.
He is not inventing the tradition. He is paying it back.
When the New York Islanders took Tavares first overall in 2009, he spent his first two NHL seasons living with Doug Weight. Home-cooked meals. A family around him. Someone who had already survived the noise. Weight later joked it was fun “until he crashed my Range Rover.” Tavares has never forgotten the part that mattered.
“I talk a lot about how Doug Weight did that for me as a young player and being around his family,” Tavares has said. “For me to come full circle in a way, it’s great.”
McKenna is the highest-profile tenant yet.
Born Dec. 20, 2007, in Whitehorse, Yukon, he is the third Yukon-born player ever drafted and the first taken first overall. At 5-foot-11 and 170 pounds, he does not overwhelm you in a doorway. He does it with the puck. He put up 129 points (41 goals, 88 assists) in 56 WHL games for Medicine Hat in 2024-25, led the Canadian Hockey League in scoring, won CHL Player of the Year and then added 38 points in 16 playoff games as the Tigers won the WHL title. He went to Penn State for one season, scored 51 points in 35 games, and left as a Hobey Baker finalist. Internationally, he won gold at the 2024 U18 Worlds and the Hlinka Gretzky Cup and produced 14 points in seven games at the 2026 World Juniors.
