St. Lawrence Felt Like Home for McKenna

“When I went to St. Lawrence it immediately felt right. It felt like home.”

That’s how Mike McKenna ’05 describes the official visit that led to his commitment to play for the St. Lawrence University men's hockey team and helped spark his lasting connection to St. Lawrence. 

McKenna retired from professional hockey at the end of the 2018-19 season after a 14-year playing career that featured a total of 575 games played, include 35 in the NHL. He played his final game alongside fellow Laurentian Greg Carey ’14 with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms in the  AHL. The year prior, he helped the Texas Stars make a run to the AHL’s Calder Cup finals with another former Saint in Gavin Bayreuther ’17.

Prior to the start of the 2019-20 NHL season, McKenna was named a desk analyst for the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights.

“I think about what I learned at St. Lawrence, how I grew as a person and where I am today and I don’t think I’m here if I didn’t go there,” says McKenna. 

The St. Louis native came to Canton after visits to Cornell and Notre Dame and needed very little time to make his decision when an offer came in from the Saints’ coaching staff. 

“When I was offered a scholarship I think I thought about it for a day, maybe, and it was just basically to do my homework and talk to my parents,” he explains. “I had another visit lined up at Colgate, but I didn’t want to pass up the chance at St. Lawrence.”

For McKenna, St. Lawrence was what was he refers to as the perfect marriage between NCAA Division I hockey and academics (McKenna earned a degree in economics). The coaching staff — particularly former head coach Joe Marsh — stressed the importance of the work the players did off the ice, just as much as what they did at Appleton Arena. 

“The way Joe took care of us as athletes and human beings — I felt valued and I think almost everybody felt that way,” he says. “Joe looked at us as people before hockey players and he really took into account that it’s something special and different at St. Lawrence. Despite being a Division I school and striving to have a great hockey program, we were still student-athletes first and foremost.” 

In addition to being the Saints’ leading goaltender for three of his four seasons on campus, McKenna also had a Monday night radio show on KSLU, the University’s student-run radio station. That, coupled with a knack for writing, helped him realize he wanted to be involved in sports media once his playing career was over. 

“When I came out of school I kept doing interviews and writing and even producing videos for our team one year in Peoria when we didn’t have a PR department,” he explains. “I would do all of those things kind of with the eye of, down the road, it’d be really nice to do media within hockey. Writing gave me a chance to just keep my name in the public and it’s something I’ve been able to continue doing a little bit with the Vegas Golden Knights."

An active alumnus as a member of the St. Lawrence Hockey Alumni Association Executive Board and host of the Saints Hockey Podcast, McKenna may have another title in his future: Laurentian dad. 

Sitting at home in his office in St. Louis, he describes the Scarlet and Brown director’s chair with “McKenna” across the back, which has long been a gift to graduating hockey seniors from the Friends of St. Lawrence Hockey, formerly the St. Lawrence Hockey Boosters.

“My daughter is desperate to become a goaltender,” McKenna says of his eldest daughter, 7-year-old Kenlin, “When I explain to her what that chair is and where it came from, she’s got a goal now. She wants to do the same thing. She wants to go to St. Lawrence, because my wife (Rachel Lindstrand McKenna '06) and I both went and we talk so fondly of it.

“She has one caveat, and that’s if she gets to go there she says ‘You better visit me!’” he says, “And I told her, ‘If you go there, you’re probably going to have a harder time keeping us off campus.'” 

This is the latest in a series of Alumni Spotlight features on SaintsAthletics.com. If you are interested in being featured, please fill out our alumni spotlight questionnaire.