Gavin McKenna Is the Better Player. Porter Martone Is the Better Calder Bet
The No. 1 pick landed in Toronto and still opened second on the Calder board. The gap between Martone and McKenna is about opportunity, not talent.
Gavin McKenna went first overall in the 2026 draft and will play his rookie season in the loudest hockey market on the continent. He is not the Calder favourite. On BET99’s board as of July 30, Philadelphia’s Porter Martone sits at +275 with McKenna at +310, and the reason has almost nothing to do with which of them is the better prospect.
Martone already played. He put up 10 points in nine NHL regular-season games last season, which means voters have seen him handle the pace and Philadelphia has already decided where he fits. McKenna arrives from a single season at Penn State where he posted 51 points in 35 games, set program freshman records for points and assists and led the Big Ten in scoring. Dominant, but at a level that translates unevenly, and into a Toronto lineup that does not hand out first-line minutes to teenagers on reputation.
The opportunity problem in Toronto
This is the crux. The Maple Leafs are trying to win now. They signed Sergei Bobrovsky to a three-year deal, brought Jack Roslovic back on two years at $4 million per season, and still employ Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies at the top of the lineup. McKenna will get power-play time because his hands demand it, but the path to 75 points runs through minutes he has to take from established players on a team with playoff pressure.
Philadelphia has the opposite problem, which is Martone’s opportunity. The Flyers spent their summer chasing star talent and missing, most publicly on Leo Carlsson. A team in that position gives its 19-year-old winger every look it can find, and volume is how rookies win this award.
His teammates seem to have made up their minds anyway. In a poll of NHL prospects published this summer by The Hockey News, McKenna was the consensus pick to be the league’s best rookie, with one player putting it bluntly: he would put his money on Gav.
The rest of the board is a defenceman’s argument
Washington’s Cole Hutson is third at +675, and he is the candidate most likely to be systematically mispriced. Rookie defencemen almost never win the Calder because voters count points, and Hutson’s job in Washington will involve a lot of minutes that do not produce them. But the Capitals were busy this summer, adding Alex Tuch and Jordan Kyrou, and a puck-mover who quarterbacks a good power play can post the kind of number that gets attention.
San Jose’s Ivar Stenberg follows at +700 into the most rookie-friendly situation in the league. Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith are already there, the Sharks are pointed upward, and nobody in that room is going to block a young forward’s ice time. Chicago’s Anton Frondell at +875 is in a similar spot for similar reasons.
Then the board falls off. Ilya Protas at +1200 gives Washington two live tickets. Roman Kantserov at +1500, Jacob Fowler at +2000 in Montreal, Konsta Helenius at +2000 in Buffalo and James Hagens at +2500 in Boston round out the top ten.
The call
Martone at +275 is the right favourite for the wrong reason, and short prices on a rookie award have a poor history. If you are betting this race, Hutson at +675 is where the number and the situation diverge most. If you are simply asking who will be the best player in this class three seasons from now, that is McKenna, and it will not be close.
Odds cited reflect boards posted in late July 2026.
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