Steve McKenna

Steve McKenna
Date of birth	August 21, 1973
place of birth	Toronto , Ontario , Canada
size	200 cm
Weight	115 kg
position	defender
Shot hand	Left
Career stations
1993-1996	Merrimack College
1996-2000	Los Angeles Kings
2000-2001	Minnesota Wild
2001	Pittsburgh Penguins
2001-2002	New York Rangers
2002-2004	Pittsburgh Penguins
2004-2005	Nottingham Panthers
2005	Adelaide Avalanche
2005-2006	HC Alleghe
2006-2008	High1
2008	China Sharks

Steve McKenna (born August 21, 1973 in Toronto , Ontario ) is a Canadian ice hockey player and coach . Most recently he coached HC Alleghe from the Italian A1 series . During his career he played for the Los Angeles Kings , Minnesota Wild , Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Rangers in the National Hockey League .

Career

McKenna played as a teenager between 1990 and 1993 in the low-tier Canadian junior leagues, including the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League . In the summer of 1993, at the age of 20, he moved to Merrimack College , for whose university team he went on the ice for three years in Hockey East , a league in the game operations of the National Collegiate Athletic Association . After the undrafted defender had been able to improve from year to year, he was signed as a free agent by the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League in May 1996, following the college season .

In his first year as a professional, the 2.03-meter-tall Canadian made nine appearances for the Kings in the NHL, but was mainly used for the Phoenix Roadrunners farm team in the International Hockey League . For the following season, however, he fought for a regular place in the NHL squad and came to 62 missions in the 1997/98 game year , in which the Enforcer was able to post eight scorer points. Despite the strong season, McKenna was only used 66 times in the two seasons between 1998 and 2000 and mostly found himself in the stands as a reservist. Therefore, he remained unprotected in the run-up to the NHL Expansion Draft 2000 and was selected by the newly formed Minnesota Wild . Also in Minnesota McKenna often filled the reserve role and moved to the Pittsburgh Penguins after only 20 games for the Wild in January 2001 in exchange for Roman Šimíček . There he was used more regularly as a result, but was no longer loyal to the team due to his expiring contract, but signed a one-year contract with the New York Rangers as a free agent . For this he filled in the 2001/02 season in 54 competitive games again from the role of Enforcer before returning to the Penguins for two years in the summer of 2002. On his second engagement in Pittsburgh, McKenna convinced in the first year primarily with his accuracy, when he scored nine goals in 79 games and prepared another. Nevertheless, he got far fewer missions in the 2003/04 season . The 49 appearances in this game year were also his last in the NHL, in whose history he went down as the second greatest player of all time after the Slovak Zdeno Chára .

Due to the lockout of the 2004/05 NHL season , McKenna moved to Europe in October 2004, where he played for the Nottingham Panthers in the British Elite Ice Hockey League . For the first time, he concentrated more on the playful element and scored 21 scorer points and only 26 penalty minutes in 49 games. In May 2005 he finally moved to Australia , where he played in the Australian Ice Hockey League for the Adelaide Avalanche and continued to convince with 19 points from 19 games. McKenna returned to the 2005-06 season but returned to Europe and signed the HC Alleghe of the Italian Serie A on. There, too, he was only active for one season, as he moved to the Asia League Ice Hockey in the summer of 2006 to play for the South Korean representative Kangwon Land , which was renamed High1 the following year. Due to his NHL experience, the defender, who was one of the very few ice hockey players to have played actively on five continents, was one of the most sought-after players in the league's development stage. After two years with the South Koreans, the league competitor China Sharks signed him in the summer of 2008 . The cooperation partner of the San Jose Sharks from the NHL hoped that the engagement of the experienced McKennas would be another positive step in their project to promote the Chinese ice hockey sport, as he is supposed to support the head coach there as an assistant coach.

Around the same time that he moved to South Korea in 2006, McKenna had already accepted his first coaching job with the post of head coach of the Australian national team . After a second place at the World Cup of Division II in 2007 , when the team narrowly failed in the South Korean selection and missed promotion, he led the team by winning the World Cup of Division II in 2008 in Division I, from which the team but immediately descended again.

In the summer of 2009 he signed a one-year contract as a coach with HC Alleghe from the Italian A1 series , which was later extended by a year.

Achievements and Awards

• 2008 gold medal at the World Championship of Division II (as head coach)

NHL statistics

	Seasons	Games	Gates	Assists	Points	Penalty minutes
Regular season	8th	373	18th	14th	32	824
Playoffs	1	3	0	1	1	8th

Web links

• Steve McKenna at hockeydb.com (English)
• Steve McKenna at legendsofhockey.net (English)
• Steve McKenna at eurohockey.com