{"id":154192,"date":"2026-01-29T01:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T01:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/154192\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T01:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T01:31:10","slug":"san-jose-sharks-macklin-celebrini-following-same-path-as-connor-mcdavid-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/154192\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Sharks’ Macklin Celebrini following same path as Connor McDavid"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN JOSE \u2014 Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid was labeled a generational talent<\/a> when he came into the NHL in 2015 and within two years, had a 100-point season, led his team back to the playoffs<\/a> after a decade-long morass and captured the Hart Trophy.<\/a><\/p>\n

Roughly a decade later, center Macklin Celebrini is in position to do all those same things<\/a> \u2014 maybe in a more impressive fashion<\/a> \u2014 as he and the San Jose Sharks get ready to face McDavid and the Oilers in a tantalizing matchup between two of the league\u2019s top scorers on Thursday in Edmonton.<\/p>\n

\u201c(McDavid\u2019s) the engine for the team, the heart and soul, with the puck, without the puck, the hardest worker every day in practice, every game. He\u2019s the best,\u201d said Sharks defenseman John Klingberg, who joined the Oilers as a free agent midway through last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all runs through him, and it all runs through Mack here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without question, while McDavid and Celebrini have different skill sets, their respective careers through their first 1\u00bd seasons in the NHL<\/a> \u2013 and their approaches to the game \u2014 are strikingly similar.<\/p>\n

After his four-point performance in San Jose\u2019s 5-2 win<\/a> over the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday, Celebrini has 141 points in 121 career NHL games. He\u2019s been the Sharks\u2019 No. 1 center since the day he arrived in 2024 and in his short career, has averaged 20:20 in ice time per game.<\/p>\n

McDavid missed three months during his rookie season in 2015-16 with a fractured left clavicle but still made a huge impact early on as the Oilers\u2019 top center with 137 points in his first 121 NHL games.<\/p>\n

Rounding up, McDavid had a total of 2,459 minutes of ice time in his first 121 games, and Celebrini had 2,461.<\/p>\n

McDavid finished with a league-leading 100 points in 82 games in 2016-17, helping lead the Oilers to their first playoff appearance since 2006. In front of a revved-up and revitalized fanbase at the newly opened Rogers Place in 2017, McDavid and the Oilers beat the Sharks in the first round<\/a> in six games.<\/p>\n

Celebrini, too, has helped re-energize Sharks nation,<\/a> as his phenomenal play \u2014 with 78 points in 51 games \u2014 is the main reason why San Jose, which finished at the bottom of the NHL standings last season, is now in the mix for their first playoff appearance since 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a great player, first and foremost,\u201d\u00a0McDavid said of Celebrini<\/a>, his future Olympic teammate,<\/a> on Wednesday. \u201cHe\u2019s driven. You could tell, even last year when we played against him. He plays hard. He plays not a typical kind of teenager game. He plays a hard game. He\u2019s dug in on faceoffs, wins puck battles and does all the little things that a veteran does. It\u2019s been impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Oilers (27-19-8) are in second place in the Pacific Division largely because of McDavid, who had a staggering 46 points in a 20-game point streak from Dec. 4 to Jan. 13, and leads the NHL with 92 points in 54 games.<\/p>\n

Beyond the numbers, though, is the way both players approach the game, and even as teenagers, made the players around them better.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s certain character traits of the great players that come into the game,\u201d said longtime Oilers color commentator Louie DeBrusk, who played 11 NHL seasons, \u201cand they all seem to have it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re obviously a little bit of a different player,\u201d Klingberg said of Celebrini and McDavid, \u201cbut also a lot of similarities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ConnorConnor McDavid #97 of the Edmonton Oilers looks to play the puck as goaltender Yaroslav Askarov #30 of the San Jose Sharks defends his net during the second period at Rogers Place on Dec. 21, 2024 in Edmonton, Canada. (Photo by Codie McLachlan\/Getty Images)\u00a0<\/p>\n

McDavid\u2019s 2016-17 season \u2013 in which he was involved in 40% of the Oilers goals \u2014 made him the runaway winner of the Hart Trophy, awarded to the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, Celebrini is making a strong case to win the Hart Trophy this season. Not only has he been in on roughly 48% of the Sharks\u2019 goals, but he has 42 more points than forward Will Smith, San Jose\u2019s second-leading scorer who just returned to the lineup after missing 13 games with an upper body injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the best players, you can see that the puck is kind of like a magnet to them,\u201d Sharks center Alex Wennberg said. \u201cSomehow, they always find a way to get it. They\u2019re creating chances but not only that, wherever (the puck is), it just gets to them. It\u2019s just a skill that is really remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historically, the Hart Trophy winner has been on a playoff team, and the Sharks are no lock to the make the postseason this year. The Sharks, via tiebreakers, enter Thursday as the Western Conference\u2019s second wild card team, but have the same number of points (57) as the Los Angeles Kings and Seattle Kraken.<\/p>\n

McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon the Colorado Avalanche and Nikita Kucherov of the Tampa Bay Lightning \u2013 the NHL\u2019s top three scorers \u2014 are all strong candidates for the Hart as well.<\/p>\n

But DeBrusk feels regardless of whether the Sharks make the playoffs, Celebrini has made a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Celebrini\u2019s) the Hart winner for me,\u201d DeBrusk said. \u201cI don\u2019t care if he makes the playoffs or not. To see a 19-year-old literally put a team on his shoulders like he has, everything goes through him, everything offensively. From watching him, he\u2019s picking up the defensive side faster than most young players.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Oilers have won 14 of the last 15 meetings with the Sharks, including going 4-0-0 last season. But perhaps the playing field will start to level out with the Sharks having a player that appears to be on the same career trajectory as McDavid, a three-time Hart Trophy winner and a five-time scoring champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you watch the stars of the game, it\u2019s almost like, \u2018Hey, this is my candy store,\u2019\u201d DeBrusk said. \u201cI\u2019m going down the aisles, and I\u2019m taking what I want. Some things I don\u2019t like, and some things I love, and the things I love, I\u2019m going to go get it again and again and again.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll see some tendencies and some things in their game they do on a regular basis, and when I watch (Celebrini), that\u2019s where he reminds me of Connor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2014 Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid was labeled a generational talent when he came into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[401,402,1533,181,404,182,88,90,89,98,403,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-154192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-inside-sports","10":"tag-keywee","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-pm-report","14":"tag-san-jose","15":"tag-san-jose-headlines","16":"tag-san-jose-news","17":"tag-san-jose-sharks","18":"tag-sharks-alert","19":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154192","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=154192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}