{"id":475461,"date":"2026-09-25T16:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T16:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/475461\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T16:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T16:20:10","slug":"san-jose-sharks-to-name-macklin-celebrini-teams-next-captain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/475461\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Sharks to name Macklin Celebrini team’s next captain"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN JOSE \u2013 The San Jose Sharks are expected to name Macklin Celebrini<\/a> as the franchise\u2019s 11th full-time captain on Friday.<\/p>\n

General manager Mike Grier,<\/a> coach Ryan Warsofsky, and Celebrini will hold a news conference<\/a> at the Sharks\u2019 practice facility on Friday afternoon to make the announcement.<\/p>\n

Celebrini, who turned 20 in June \u2014 roughly two years after the Sharks selected him No. 1 overall<\/a> in the NHL draft in Las Vegas \u2014 becomes the youngest captain in team history<\/a> and now the youngest player in the league to wear the \u2018C\u2019.<\/p>\n

Celebrini, a native of North Vancouver, B.C.<\/a>, has been the Sharks\u2019 leading scorer in each of his first two NHL seasons. In April, he established a new team record for scoring in a single season with 115 points in 82 games in 2025-26, breaking Joe Thornton\u2019s nearly 20-year-old record by one point.<\/p>\n

Later in April, Celebrini, as an indication of how much respect he\u2019s garnered from his peers across the league, was named a finalist<\/a> for the Ted Lindsay Award, given to the NHL\u2019s most outstanding player as voted by members of the NHL Players Association.<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay\u2019s Nikita Kucherov and Edmonton\u2019s Connor McDavid were also finalists, and McDavid later won.<\/p>\n

Celebrini also captained Canada at the IIHF World Championship in May, a team that featured\u00a0several respected NHL veterans, including his idol, Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby, who wanted Celebrini to wear the \u2018C\u2019.<\/p>\n

Logan Couture served as the Sharks\u2019 captain from the start of the 2019-20 season until the end of 2024-25, when he announced that his playing career was ending due to a chronic injury to his groin and pelvic area. Couture began his Sharks career in 2009 and is fourth on the team\u2019s all-time scoring list with 701 points.<\/p>\n

Before last season began, the Sharks chose not to replace Couture, announcing instead that Celebrini, Tyler Toffoli, Barclay Goodrow, Mario Ferraro and Alexander Wennberg would serve as alternate captains.<\/p>\n

In July, the Sharks made Celebrini the highest-paid player in team history, signing him to a five-year, $94 million contract extension<\/a> that keeps him with the team until the end of the 2031-32 season.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s announcement comes just over a week after training camp began on Sept. 17, when Grier said he was in no hurry to name a captain for this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said before that the captaincy in this league, it\u2019s a sacred thing to me,\u201d Grier said. \u201cIt\u2019s very important. It\u2019s not something I\u2019m in a rush to hand out to anyone. So when we do decide to name a captain, it\u2019s hopefully someone who\u2019s going to be captain for a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really believe in moving the \u2018C\u2019 around every year or every couple of years, whatever it may be. So we\u2019ll take our time and make the best decision for the organization and for the players and the group.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel I\u2019m comfortable with myself and how I lead,\u201d Celebrini said last month when asked about the challenges of captaining a team, \u201cand I don\u2019t think it\u2019d really change anything in the way I approach every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s announcement about Celebrini becoming the team\u2019s captain may have been revealed early<\/a> by accident.<\/p>\n

Celebrini jerseys for sale on the Sharks\u2019 website for official merchandise briefly displayed a \u2018C\u2019 on the upper left side of the star centerman\u2019s No. 71 sweater on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The image was quickly removed and replaced by a Celebrini sweater that lacked the captain\u2019s \u2018C\u2019 after it had been spotted \u2013 and shown \u2013 on a Sharks fan\u2019s social media account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2013 The San Jose Sharks are expected to name Macklin Celebrini as the franchise\u2019s 11th full-time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[184,7,181,1035,404,88,90,89,98,198,403,94685,200,127],"class_list":["post-475461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-latest-headlines","tag-macklin-celebrini","tag-nhl","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-santa-clara-county","tag-sharks-alert","tag-social-alert","tag-south-bay","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475461","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=475461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}