McCann Feels ‘Really Good’ Again Filling Net

ANAHEIM – This is finally the part where Jared McCann can at least take solace in having tried to preventatively avoid the iceberg about to derail his yearslong cruise through opposition goalies.

Capping his best goal-scoring month ever with 10 in January alone, McCann has finally gotten started on the 2025-26 season he’d hoped would be pain-free. He’d done the suggested off-season surgical procedure, additional rehab, new training routine to focus on smaller muscles to prevent leg pains dogging last season and even bought a third home in Toronto to spend ensuing summers with a trainer specializing in such body maintenance workouts.

None of it kept him from missing 24 of the season’s first 35 games.

“It’s just been one of those seasons,” McCann said last week. “I’m hoping it’s finally all behind me now and I can make up for some of it the rest of the way.”

January was certainly a start, with McCann’s 10 goals and 20 points both setting new Kraken and individual records. On Monday, he was named the NHL’s First Star of the Week after putting up four goals, three assists in three games played through Saturday’s win over the Vegas Golden Knights.

It’s the second time a Kraken player has been named a First Star by the league, with goaltender Martin Jones getting the honor back in January 2023 while also earning a Third Star in November 2022. Eeli Tolvanen was also named a Second Star this season back in late December.

“It’s definitely cool,” McCann said after the Kraken practiced here Monday at the Honda Center ahead of Tuesday night’s game against the Anaheim Ducks. “Obviously I don’t get there without the guys I’m playing with. And obviously we’re grinding right now as a team and we’re playing well. I don’t get that accolade without any of the guys on our team right now.”

At this point, McCann’s 16 goals in 30 games have him ahead of his 40-goal pace from the team’s 2022-23 playoff season when he began to be whispered about as an underrated “elite” talent.

This is the kind of production McCann hoped to return to after surgery last April to remove bone spurs above both knees causing escalating discomfort in his quadriceps muscles. It had been lingering since summer of 2024, though he’d experienced it before and figured he’d soldier on after starting last season scoring nine of his eventual 22 goals in the first five weeks alone.

“But then as it went along, (production) kind of faded and then at the end it was like, ‘OK, I’d better get this taken care of,’” he said. “Long term, it’s probably the best thing I could have done, for sure.”

That part is easier to swallow with McCann back and looking like one of those goal-scorer acquisitions contending teams make in blockbuster trades every winter. The Kraken achieved much of their playoff positioning with McCann sidelined but now have gained a player already second on the team in goals and sixth in points despite having played just more than half the games.

“I feel like I’m starting to feel a lot better,” McCann said. “I mean, there’s good days and bad days. It’s a condensed schedule and the more games you play you’re going to feel it a little bit more. But I feel like I’m starting to rebound quicker now and can feel the strength coming back.”

McCann hinted at season ending media availability last April he’d undergo “a procedure” to address a lingering issue. This was after his 22 goals were the fewest he’d managed in any campaign as the Kraken’s all-time leading scorer.

Even when the arduous recovery took longer than he initially expected, he figured it was all for a good reason. His missing every Kraken preseason game wasn’t anticipated. But McCann knew he couldn’t repeat last season. He’d felt similar quad pains prior summers, but this was different.

“It just wouldn’t go away,” McCann said. “It usually does go away but this time it didn’t.”

His wife, Val, said her Kraken winger husband is downplaying what last season was like and that people should know why he wanted his quad issues fixed – even if he didn’t fully appreciate the recovery time required.

“He was very, very sore all of last year,” she said. “I honestly don’t know how he did it.”

She added that McCann: “Definitely put on a brave face. He didn’t want to be seen as a bad teammate, and he was worried he’d be letting people down if he didn’t play through it.”

She believed so much that McCann needed to do something she agreed to a purchase last fall that went against most of what she was about. The couple bought a home in a Toronto apartment complex so McCann could be closer next summer to his longstanding trainer, Matt Nichol – who has a stable of NHL and NFL clients – that he’d previously been commuting about 90 minutes to see from a farm property he also owns near the rural southern Ontario communities where he was raised.

This was a big deal as the couple are not city slickers.

“We definitely are both more rural oriented people,” she said. “We haven’t sold our farm, so we will be coming back there and doing the back-and-forth thing with Toronto because we get exhausted sometimes trying to keep up with living in a city. It’s nice to check out sometimes and be back with the earth and animals and fresh air and greenery.”

That’s why they enjoy the smaller feel of Seattle, with ample room to roam with their dog Cheddar, a Corgi that dressed up as a groomsman for their Toronto wedding. And why they’ve previously enjoyed extended summer breaks at their Ontario farm, though they’ll now spend far less time there due to McCann’s training choice.

The idea had initially been to sell the farm. But they couldn’t part with it. Part of what attracted them to each other in the first place was their shared rural upbringing on farms close to one another. They were introduced online and by phone through mutual friends and hadn’t even met in-person until their November 2016 first date. In an interesting twist, it was – of all places – in big city Toronto.

McCann was playing for the Florida Panthers at the time. He took her to see the Toronto Raptors NBA team play Golden State at Scotiabank Arena, where McCann would register an assist the following night against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

“My uncle is a police officer in Toronto and arranged to get me the tickets,” McCann said.

The rest is history. McCann’s wife keeps the ticket stubs displayed on her former bedroom wall at her parents’ Ontario dairy farm.

“I was 19 (McCann had just turned 20) and it was kind of different for me being the little farm girl to go to the city and meet somebody I’d technically never met before,” Val said. “But I remember it clearly. He was a small-town vibe type of guy. He’s like shy, not showboaty or anything like that. So, it was a very comfortable first date. But a big city for me.”

McCann was clear when he bought the Toronto place about why he’s now re-introducing that dreaded big-city vibe. He likes what trainer Nichol told him about building “smaller muscles” and figures it will extend his career.

“I just thought I needed to make the change to get out there to see him more,” McCann said weeks after the purchase. “He’s been really great for my career, especially when I was in Florida. Back then, it was kind of I needed to get bigger, faster and stronger. And he helped me out a lot with it.

“But now, I feel like I’m at the age where I need to start training differently and start focusing more on maintenance stuff.”

McCann, who turns 30 in May, can skate daily at the Toronto training center where Nichol has his gym, as opposed to seeking ice times in various rinks near his Ontario farm home. And he’ll have access to “different training, a lot more Pilates and stuff like that. I’ll definitely be trying other stuff next summer. Not just Pilates, a bunch of yoga stuff.”

The main focus is: “Small body parts stuff, groins. More like the little muscles that you’ve got to take care of as you get older, so you don’t start having issues.”

That sounded like a great plan at this season’s outset. But then – as boxer Mike Tyson famously warned about plans sounding great – McCann got punched in the mouth. More specifically, he was knocked on his keister. The season’s second game against Vegas, he scored in overtime to deliver a 2-1 win, but only after getting belted from behind seconds earlier by goalie Adin Hill and then flattened again by Mitch Marner as he scored.

McCann immediately knew something wasn’t right. The overtime winner was his second goal in two games, and he scored again the next time out in Montreal and hit the post after that in Ottawa. But he looked invisible in an ensuing game at Toronto after that and was shut down by the Kraken ahead of the season’s sixth contest in Philadelphia.

The legs he’d worked so hard all summer to get back into NHL game shape just weren’t ready for the physical punishment involved.

“I was starting all over,” he said of the ensuing rehab. “It was tough, because I’d lost a lot of my muscle in my legs. It was definitely an eye opener.”

Just under six weeks later, McCann was ready for another try and scored his third game back in Edmonton and again against Los Angeles early on in his sixth contest after returning. But in the final minute of that game, the Kraken trailing by a goal, veteran Kings netminder Anton Forsberg tripped McCann hard and sent him crashing to the ice, squirming with an obvious lower body injury.

Forsberg was penalized and the Kraken tied it on the ensuing power play and won in overtime. But that was of little solace to McCann, who knew right away he would be out multiple weeks.

Even worse, the injury occurred on the front end of the team’s Dads & Mentors trip in which McCann’s father, Matt, flew in to watch his son that night and two days later in Utah. McCann’s father watched from a suite as his son crumpled to the ice.

“I knew it wasn’t good, let’s put it that way,” McCann’s dad said.

The trip was supposed to be a celebration of sacrifices Matt and his wife, Erin, had made on their son’s behalf. Matt owned a third-generation family construction and gravel company in Stratford, Ontario – 95 miles southwest of Toronto – and used to flood part of their sprawling farm property to use as a rink, eventually installing boards. For warmer months, he built a shooting range with nets and targets on an asphalt path alongside the property’s home. The family was advised that shooting pucks on asphalt strengthened wrists. Another farm they lived on had a horse-manure bunker that was cleaned so McCann could shoot at the cinder-block walls. 

But during their car ride home after the mid-December Kings game, his dad didn’t speak much, just letting McCann spell things out about his injury and the rehab ahead. “He was very disappointed,” his father said. “He said, ‘Dad, I just can’t catch a break.’”

They traveled to Utah together nonetheless, with McCann’s father telling his son to stay positive. He’d watched McCann rehab from surgery a couple of weeks at his retirement home in Florida last spring and knew how committed – and frustrated -- he was about overcoming his quad issues.

“He just said that it wasn’t healing,” his father said. “And he's impatient, right? He gets that from his dad. He gets impatient and gets out there and, you know, okay…let's do something. Let's try and make this better. And he just he couldn't get it.”

That was rock bottom. McCann had done the surgery to deliver for his team the fourth year of a five-year deal. But the fits and starts weighed on him.

“He wants to play,” his father said. “He doesn't want to sit around. He doesn't want to let anybody down. He doesn't want to let the team down. He wants to be there. You know, he loves the guys. He loves playing.”

McCann had a hard time dealing with his father coming out to see him and then being unable to play.

“It was tough,” he admitted.

But McCann made it back quicker than he’d initially anticipated, though the 18-day layoff felt like an eternity. This time, he truly was back. McCann scored in his second game, then again in his third and hasn’t really stopped since.

“I’m happy for him,” Kraken coach Lane Lambert said Monday. “I’m happy with the way he’s playing. I’ve talked about it over the last little while how smart he is. How poised he is. And it looks to me like he’s feeling good. And that’s the most important thing.”

As an example of McCann’s intelligence and poise, Lambert mentioned a “small play” he made against Vegas late in Saturday night’s game with the Kraken holding a one-goal lead and the Golden Knights pressing deep in their defensive zone.
“He got the puck in our zone and instead of just flipping it out, he had the presence of mind and the poise to turn and take a look, hit Jordan Eberle wide and off we go playing in the offensive zone,” Lambert said. “Instead of just flipping it out and then they’re coming right back at us. These are the kinds of things that make a difference.”

Indeed, McCann has long sought intellectual advantages on the ice. He’d previously employed onetime Colorado Avalanche forward Joey Hishon, who he knew from his Stratford hometown, to tutor him in the finer details of hockey so he could gain a decision-making advantage on what to do with the puck.

But staying on the ice is a key part of using those tactics.

McCann credits the Kraken medical staff for being “very patient’ and sticking by him with each false start. And helping get him to where he finally needed to be post-surgery. If anything, his ordeal has reaffirmed his commitment to building up those smaller muscle groups he believes not only hampered his previous season, but his comeback attempts this campaign as well.

“As you get older – and a lot of guys will probably tell you this – your training changes,” McCann said. “It’s not about building muscle mass. It’s more about making you stronger. The little muscles we were talking about and injury prevention.”

And with each goal McCann pops behind an opposing netminder, memories of what it took to get here start to fade just a little quicker. At the same time, the solace of knowing he did the right thing becomes more prominent.

“It was worth it,” he said.