With the third-to-last pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, which was acquired from Colorado, the New Jersey Devils selected Quinn McKenzie from the Soo Greyhounds of the OHL. In 2026-27, McKenzie will be playing for the Penn State Nittany Lions. For such a late pick in the draft, there is actually a lot to like here! Quinn had 21 goals and 30 assists in 65 games for the Greyhounds this season, jumping from Shattuck St. Mary’s to the OHL and putting up a very good season in third-line minutes. I am actually surprised,
looking at his profile, that he never got much scouting attention, especially with his five goals and seven points in 10 playoff games for Soo. However, he is a 5’10” and 176 pound right-handed center, so maybe the size factor made him slip through the cracks. The Maryland-native also grades out very well on Mitchell Brown’s CHL tracking project for a prospect this late in the draft, with solid passing and defensive skills.
You can see here that the areas McKenzie will have to work on the most are his turnovers. He has been a puck-dominant center in the OHL, and it does seem that he struggled a bit with puck protection at times. However, with an ability to get back and strong impact on getting the puck out of the defensive zone and past center ice, McKenzie has a strong base to establish himself as a third or fourth-line winger if he cannot quite drive the offense as a center. Brock Otten, the Director of Scouting for McKeen’s Hockey, liked this one quite a bit:
Additionally, Quinn had one of the highest grades in the seventh round from the analytical aggregator Tape2Tape Prospects:
He is a player that wants to be good for his team. Back in October, when the season was just getting underway, McKenzie was featured in the The Sault Star after scoring an overtime winner over the Kitchener Rangers. Despite having three points in a 5-4 win, McKenzie apologized to his team postgame, per head coach John Dean, for his play in the first period. You can see the highlights from that game below. On the overtime goal, McKenzie spins off a defender along the boards and goes right to the net, ending the game.
This might be the kind of player he is. When he scored his first OHL goal, he won a puck battle on the boards at a tough angle and then went around to the net, scoring on a rebound.
Unfortunately, as a largely unranked player, McKenzie lacks the usual highlight packages I could normally point to even though he had the statistical production to assemble such a video. Maybe one comes out eventually. Maybe he gets added to the NHLe databases. We’ll see. For now, feel free to vote in our flash poll and leave your thoughts in the comments below.
