Ivar Stenberg

Entering the 2025-26 season, the scouting community following NHL draft prospects generally shared a clear consensus: the top prospect for the 2026 NHL Entry Draft was WHL star Gavin McKenna. McKenna, who was an otherworldly scorer with the Medicine Hat Tigers, was slated to begin his NCAA career with Penn State. Most believed he’d ride a highly productive college season all the way into the summer, where he’d become the No. 1 overall pick.

So far, things haven’t quite played out that way, and the tide has begun to shift at the top of public-facing NHL draft rankings. The early rumblings began on Nov. 18, when The Athletic’s Corey Pronman wrote that McKenna’s path to becoming the No. 1 pick was now “in question.”

At the time, he cited a lack of clear alternatives for the No. 1 slot as a reason why he believed McKenna was still likely to be the No. 1 pick, even if he was no longer a lock. Then, in his rankings on Dec. 10, he ranked McKenna No. 4 in the class, behind center Tynan Lawrence, defenseman Keaton Verhoeff, and winger Ivar Stenberg.

It was the World Junior Championships later that month that provided the stage for a true alternative to McKenna to emerge as a candidate to become the No. 1 pick: Stenberg, a winger in the SHL.

Sportsnet’s Jason Bukala, who is a former NHL scouting director, wrote on Jan. 13 that Stenberg was his new No. 1 prospect in the 2026 class. Yesterday, two of the more prominent public-facing NHL draft rankings were released, coming from The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler and the team at Elite Prospects. Both Wheeler and Elite Prospects ranked Stenberg as their No. 1 prospect, in both cases overtaking McKenna, who fell to No. 2.

This emerging trend in public-facing rankings is, without question, the storyline to watch regarding the upcoming entry draft. McKenna, as mentioned, entered the season as not only the consensus No. 1 player, but a skater widely believed to be a future No. 1 pick of above-average quality relative to other players selected at that slot. An exceptional status player who entered the CHL at the age of 15, McKenna managed 97 points as a 16-year-old winger for Medicine Hat, and was absolutely brilliant in 2024-25, scoring 129 points in 56 regular-season games and 38 points in 16 postseason contests.

That production hasn’t translated to the same extent to the NCAA, where McKenna has 24 points in 20 games. While that’s still very impressive production for a freshman player, to be clear, it remains below what many expected of McKenna.

Other top prospects in the past have had more productive freshman campaigns, such as Adam Fantilli (65 points in 36 games during his draft year) and Jack Eichel (71 points in 40 games). McKenna was widely believed to be of that caliber as a prospect, so the fact that his production, while still good, isn’t on that level, appears to have hurt him in the rankings.

Wheeler wrote in his rankings this week that McKenna “increasingly has frustrated evaluators” this season.

It is worth noting, when considering McKenna’s production, that the NCAA isn’t what it has been in the past. That is to say, the quality of competition in college hockey has reached new heights thanks to a recent rule change that allowed players with CHL experience (and even pro experience, in some cases) to play college hockey. That massive influx of new, higher-level talent into the collegiate ranks has likely made it more difficult for younger players such as McKenna to excel to the same extent that Fantilli and Eichel, for example, were able to.

But one factor totally outside of McKenna’s control that appears to have impacted his odds of becoming the No. 1 pick considerably has been the emergence of Stenberg. The Swedish winger is having one of the best seasons by a draft-eligible SHL forward in the recent history of the draft process. The 18-year-old has 26 points in 27 games for Frölunda, and he added alongside that 10 points in seven games at the World Juniors, leading Sweden to a gold medal.

The key aspects of Stenberg’s game, according to public-facing scouts, that have allowed him to close the gap on McKenna and emerge as a real contender to be the No. 1 pick are his competitiveness, physical development, and ability to impact the game away from the puck.

Elite Prospects wrote that Stenberg “looks ready to make an NHL impact as soon as next fall,” and Wheeler noted in his own rankings that Stenberg is “very, very strong in hockey terms” and “wins a ton of battles along the boards.” When it comes to predicting whether a teenage player will be able to make an impact at the NHL level quickly after being drafted, those are key traits that come into focus. That Stenberg has made those traits some of the standout elements of his game is, per the indications of the public scouting sphere, one of the key factors as to why he’s become a potential No. 1 pick.

Of course, there is still quite a bit of time before any player hears his name called in Buffalo at the 2026 draft. There’s still more than enough time for evaluations to change, for other players to stand out and make a push for the No. 1 slot (such as defenders Verhoeff or Chase Reid, for example). There’s also enough time for McKenna to address some of scouts’ concerns about his game and make a push for the No. 1 status Stenberg appears to have now grabbed hold of.

But at this point, the tide appears to be changing in the public scouting sphere, and it’s entirely possible if not likely, that the tide could also be changing in the eyes of NHL scouts. A Swedish player has not gone No. 1 overall at the NHL draft since Rasmus Dahlin in 2018, and Dahlin was the first since 1989’s Mats Sundin.

Photos courtesy of Barry Reeger-Imagn Images