{"id":524528,"date":"2026-11-10T04:52:17","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T04:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/524528\/"},"modified":"2026-11-10T04:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T04:52:17","slug":"matthew-schaefer-macklin-celebrini-should-be-next-big-nhl-rivalry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/524528\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Schaefer-Macklin Celebrini should be next big NHL rivalry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SAN JOSE, Calif. \u2014 If the NHL wants to find its successors to the marketing buffet of Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin\u2019s rivalry, it could do a whole lot worse than the Matthew Schaefer-Macklin Celebrini matchup that wrote its third chapter here on Monday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Schaefer is 19 years old, Celebrini is 20. The San Jose star was named captain of his team ahead of this season and had a starring performance at the Olympics for Team Canada last season; two milestones that everyone around the Islanders believes Schaefer will hit at the first available opportunity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019ve already co-starred in a Tim Horton\u2019s commercial that included Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon and Brad Marchand. Though they\u2019d met briefly before that, Schaefer said that shoot was the first time the two had gotten to know each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"aspect-ratio:1.49926794;display:block\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\"   data-modal-image=\"41762302\" width=\"885\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/macklin-celebrini-71-san-jose-147950817.jpg\" alt=\"Macklin Celebrini of the San Jose Sharks skates with the puck during a game against the Dallas Stars.\" class=\"wp-image-41762302\"\/>Macklin Celebrini (71) of the San Jose Sharks handles the puck against the Dallas Stars in Dallas on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re both meant to play hockey and that\u2019s our job. When we\u2019re away from the rink and have fun at a Tim\u2019s shoot, just messing around and enjoying our time together, it\u2019s nice,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you can get away from the rink and be a kid \u2014 he\u2019s a year older than me so we\u2019re both still pretty young \u2014 so it\u2019s fun to just be off and have some fun.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE, Calif. \u2014 If the NHL wants to find its successors to the marketing buffet of Sidney&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[13254,12745,404,88,90,89,98,127,52880],"class_list":["post-524528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-matthew-schaefer","tag-new-york-islanders","tag-nhl","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524528","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=524528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}