{"id":114500,"date":"2025-12-31T03:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T03:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/114500\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T03:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T03:46:08","slug":"san-jose-sharks-macklin-celebrini-has-made-canadian-olympic-team-per-espn-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/114500\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Sharks’ Macklin Celebrini has made Canadian Olympic team, per ESPN"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN JOSE \u2013 The Olympic dreams of San Jose Sharks center Macklin Celebrini will reportedly be coming true.<\/a><\/p>\n

After an electrifying first half of the season,<\/a> Celebrini has made the Canadian team\u2019s roster for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, according to ESPN.<\/a><\/p>\n

The 12 countries participating<\/a> in the Olympic men\u2019s tournament, which begins in February, have to submit their 25-man rosters by Wednesday. The Canadian team, which will feature many of the NHL\u2019s best players, will be formally announced on Wednesday at 9 a.m. (PST).<\/p>\n

Per ESPN, players named to the Canadian and American teams will be informed by their respective federations on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

The 19-year-old Celebrini, who is expected to be the youngest player on the Canadian team, entered Tuesday as the NHL\u2019s third-leading scorer with 60 points in 39 games, trailing only Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid (69) and Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon (66).<\/p>\n

Celebrini said earlier this month t<\/a>hat it would \u201cmean everything\u201d to represent Canada at the Olympics.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a kid watching the Olympics, watching World Juniors, seeing the Canadian Maple Leaf, that\u2019s always the biggest honor,\u201d Celebrini said. \u201cIt\u2019d be a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

With 21 goals and 39 assists, Celebrini has been involved in exactly half of the Sharks\u2019 120 goals this season, as he\u2019s led San Jose to a 19-17-3 record after the team had the NHL\u2019s worst mark at 20-50-12 last year.<\/p>\n

Still, as if he were leaving nothing to chance, Celebrini\u2019s production has actually increased in the weeks leading up to the Canadian team\u2019s announcement. Celebrini had 37 points in 26 games through October and November, but in 13 games so far this month, he has seven goals and 16 assists.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a very, very, very focused kid and wants to get better each and every day,\u201d Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said of Celebrini on Tuesday. \u201cSo I\u2019d be pretty surprised if he\u2019s not on that roster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Celebrini, a native of North Vancouver, British Columbia, and a former player with the Jr. Sharks, had his NHL-leading 10th three-point game of the season on Monday as the Sharks beat the Anaheim Ducks 5-4.<\/p>\n

In NHL history, only Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby and Wayne Gretzky, the NHL\u2019s all-time leading scorer, needed fewer games to reach 60 points as a teenager than Celebrini. Crosby needed 35 games in 2006-07, and Gretzky reached 60 points in 37 games with the Oilers in 1980-81.<\/p>\n

Celebrini has an eight-game point streak for the Sharks going into their home game on Wednesday afternoon against the Minnesota Wild.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Celebrini\u2019s production is not the only reason he\u2019s become one of the NHL\u2019s best players, as the way he battles for loose pucks and backchecks makes him someone who doesn\u2019t necessarily have to score to be effective.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s becoming one of the top players in the league scoring-wise, but it\u2019s the other intangibles that he does,\u201d Team Canada assistant general manager Jim Nill told Bay Area News Group earlier this month. \u201cHe plays the game the right way, and that\u2019s, for a young guy, you don\u2019t see very many young guys who play like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sharks have other players who could join Celebrini in Italy.<\/p>\n

Forward Philipp Kurashev is expected to be named to Switzerland\u2019s roster, and winger Pavol Regenda will likely be on Slovakia\u2019s team. Regenda helped Slovakia win its first-ever Olympic medal, a bronze, at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. Center Alexander Wennberg and forward William Eklund also have a chance at being named to Sweden\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

This is the first time since 2014 that NHL players will be taking part in the Olympics. The league did not pause its schedule for the 2018 Games in South Korea due to a dispute with the IOC over cost issues,<\/a> and in 2022, the NHL scrapped plans to allow its players to compete due to rising COVID-19 cases and a growing number of postponed league games.<\/p>\n

Sharks players who have represented Canada in previous Olympics include Owen Nolan (2002), Joe Thornton (2006, 2010), Patrick Marleau (2010, 2014), Dan Boyle (2010), Dany Heatley (2010), and Marc-Edouard Vlasic (2014).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2013 The Olympic dreams of San Jose Sharks center Macklin Celebrini will reportedly be coming true.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[404,88,90,89,98,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-114500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-san-jose","10":"tag-san-jose-headlines","11":"tag-san-jose-news","12":"tag-san-jose-sharks","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}