{"id":457485,"date":"2026-02-04T08:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/457485\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T08:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:50:10","slug":"celebrini-shades-of-thornton-proving-future-is-now-for-sharks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/457485\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrini shades of Thornton, proving future is now for Sharks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celebrini’s high-octane offense has spurred the Sharks into a potential playoff team. The peach-faced forward, who turns 20 on June 13, effortlessly has ignored the dreaded “sophomore slump” while averaging more than a point a game (81 points; 28 goals, 53 assists in 54 games). He leads the Sharks (27-23-4) into a litmus test against the Colorado Avalanche, owners of the best record in the NHL (36-9-9), at Ball Arena in Denver on Wednesday (9 p.m. ET; NBCSCA, ALT), their last game before he travels to Milano for the Olympics.<\/p>\n

A portent of things to come became available when Celebrini completed a hat trick by scoring a power-play goal at 2:52 of overtime for a 3-2 home win against the Utah Mammoth on Nov. 18. He then tied Sidney Crosby<\/a> (55 in 2006-07) for the most points by a teenager entering the holiday break during a 7-2 loss at the Vegas Golden Knights on Dec. 23.<\/p>\n

“He’s really good,” Mammoth coach Andre Tourigny said. “He works really hard. I like that about him. His work ethic and passion for the game, you can see it. He’s playing really well.”<\/p>\n

The kid’s arresting efforts bring to mind an earlier Sharks scoring hero, Joe Thornton, nicknamed “Jumbo” because of his 6-foot-4, 219 fuselage and the fact that famed circus star Jumbo the Elephant died in St. Thomas, Ontario, where Thornton was raised.<\/p>\n

Unlike Celebrini’s cyclonic start, Thornton’s rookie season (1997-98) was a downer, but gradually — without much fuss or fanfare — he became an idol.<\/p>\n

“Joe was a terrific player and a very good teammate,” Mike O’Connell, a retired NHL defenseman who later became Boston Bruins general manager, told ESPN.com on Dec. 9, 2015. “When you really come down to it, being a good teammate is probably the nicest thing you can say about someone.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celebrini’s high-octane offense has spurred the Sharks into a potential playoff team. The peach-faced forward, who turns 20…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-457485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}