NEIGHBORING RICHMOND’S PAUL MCCOY COULD BE KY’S FIRST NHL PLAYER

Back in 2016, a little-known hockey player named Paul McAvoy wrapped up a brief stint with the BCHL and committed to Colgate University to play hockey. While not a Louisa native, McAvoy hails from Richmond (though some pages list Lexington as his hometown), and is the closest thing to a local hockey star we’ve seen in some time. As a 19-year-old in the BCHL, McAvoy led the team in goals and added an impressive 18 assists in the process. The road through amateur, semi-professional, and/or collegiate hockey can be a winding one, but this performance appears to have put him on the map. Now, he’s thought to have at least a shot at the NHL. 

Because Louisa, and really Kentucky overall has relatively little to do with hockey, we should note that the BCHL stands for the British Columbia Hockey League, meaning McAvoy got his start far from home. It’s a junior Canadian league, meant to prepare players for the college game as much as for the pros. The NHL though, is the ultimate goal for any promising young junior, American or otherwise. The pro league features 24 U.S. clubs and seven from Canada, per an updated guide touching on the NHL’s format and structure, and a prep league in British Columbia is every bit as much of a stepping stone as one in the U.S., if not more so. 

Following his two-year stint with the Surrey Eagles of the BCHL, McAvoy did indeed go on to Colgate, where he really appears to have flourished as a prospect. Though his 2018-19 campaign has been relatively quiet, McAvoy scored six goals in 37 games at just 21 years of age in 2017-18, in what is ultimately a very competitive college environment. 

That didn’t propel him to the top of the NHL prospect ranks by any means, but it did put him on the radar, and it started a discussion of whether Kentucky – one of just a handful of states not to have produced an NHL player – might have its first. For his part, McAvoy has embraced this idea. Despite having lived what one article called a “nomadic lifestyle” in pursuit of the sport he loves, spending time all over the U.S. and much of Canada, McAvoy has been quoted as saying that Kentucky is what molded him into a hockey player. He’s conscious of the state’s relative irrelevance in the sport, and wants to show that a young man from Kentucky can make it in the NHL, too. 

Time will tell if McAvoy is able to make it as far as the NHL. It’s not a guarantee just yet. In the meantime though, it’s an unusual Kentucky sports story we might want to keep our eyes on. Even if the state doesn’t have too much of a connection to professional hockey, it would be fun to see a first Kentucky native join the NHL ranks.