Even though the 2026 Cup prophecy for San Jose is by the wayside, Macklin Celebrini is still one of the greatest players in the National Hockey League. Even Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid called him one of the “very, very best” players in this league. He’s a top contender for the Hart Trophy and I don’t think he needed to drag his team single-handedly into the playoffs, which he almost did, to win it. Here’s why:
In a home game against the St. Louis Blues on Mar. 30, Celebrini scored his 100th and 101st points, becoming the sixth teenager in NHL history to reach the 100-point plateau. Since then, he has worked his way up the ladder, settling behind only Wayne Gretzky (137) and Sidney Crosby (120) for most points by a teenager in a single season, with 115 points.
Celebrini’s aforementioned groundbreaking 115 points (45 goals, 70 assists) have him 4th in NHL scoring this season at only 19 years old, behind only McDavid (138), Kucherov (130), and MacKinnon (127), as well as 4th in goals across the NHL, shadowing MacKinnon (53), Caufield (51), and McDavid (48).
He broke the teenage scoring record for the San Jose Sharks earlier this year. But in the last game of the season, on Apr. 16, against the Winnipeg Jets, he scored his 113th, 114th, and 115th points (1 goal, 2 assists) to break the Sharks all-time single-season scoring record, regardless of age. The record was previously held by Hall of Famer Joe Thornton from the 2006-07 season, when Thornton had already been in the league for nine years and was 27 years old. Celebrini broke the record in his 2nd season, at 19 years old. He also took over 2nd place in single-season goals in franchise history, behind only Jonathan Cheechoo.
Celebrini’s astounding 115-point season gives him more single-season points than the following players’ career highs: Alex Ovechkin, Patrick Kane, Gordie Howe, Pavel Bure, Auston Matthews, Paul Kariya, Matthew and Brady Tkachuk, as well as Quinn, Jack, and Luke Hughes. To add insult to injury, he is the only drafted player born between 2001 and 2007, roughly 1,556 players, to break 100 points in a single season. He is the only man in an entire generation of pro-hockey players to score 100 or more points.
For a generational talent-to-generational talent comparison, McDavid, inarguably the greatest active player in the NHL, scored a total of 157 points (50 goals, 107 assists) through his first 135 games. Through Celebrini’s first 135 games, he recorded 158 points (60 goals, 98 assists). Through McDavid’s first two seasons, he combined for 148 career points, and won the Hart Trophy with a 100-point sophomore campaign. Through Celebrini’s first two seasons, he scored a total of 178 career points, with a 115-point sophomore season. Celebrini has 15 more points in year two and 30 more career points than McDavid did, making him an easy option for the Hart Trophy.
However, it’s important to remember that the Hart Trophy is not a points trophy; it’s for the player deemed most important to the success of his team. That’s why Taylor Hall won in 2018 with only 98 points. He won the award because he had 41 more points than the second leading scorer on his team. Celebrini has 56 more points than the second-leading scorer on his team, the largest point-gap in the entire National Hockey League. Other Hart Trophy candidates like McDavid, Kucherov, and MacKinnon have 41, 42, and 27 more points than second place, respectively. Surely, it is indisputable that Celebrini is the most valuable player to his team, and there’s more to back that up than raw point totals.
Celebrini has factored in on roughly 46.2% of all Sharks goals this season, the highest impact-percentage by a teenager in NHL history, surpassing Gretzky, who was in on around 45% of all Edmonton goals in the 1979-80 season, when he was 19 and won his first Hart Trophy. Celebrini also had 18 games with 3 or more points, putting him behind only Gretzky in teenage NHL history, who had 19. Celebrini is also the only forward in the league to lead his team in average time-on-ice (TOI), with 21:18 TOI nightly.
Furthermore, the Sharks have a 2-17-3 record when Celebrini doesn’t get on the score sheet. Meaning that through 82 games-played, the San Jose Sharks have won only twice when Celebrini is held pointless. Those two non-Celebrini-driven wins came against the 26th-place Florida Panthers and the 28th-place Toronto Maple Leafs. Celebrini has only been held scoreless 23 times in 82 games and has never let it happen in more than two consecutive games. If that doesn’t make him invaluable to Sharks wins, I don’t know what does.
Most argue that for Celebrini to win the Hart Trophy, he would have had to have pulled his team into the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Obviously, that did not happen this year, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve this trophy. The season before Celebrini’s draft, the Sharks finished 32nd, last in the league, with 19 wins and 47 total points. This year, Celebrini’s breakout year, the Sharks have won 39 games and have 86 points in 22nd place, while being in an out of the top-three in the Pacific, and in and out of Wildcard #2 in the West all year, until their 80th game in an 82-game season.
Although they’ve fallen from a playoff spot, Celebrini has carried his team out of the basement of the league essentially by himself, earning his team some long over-due respect, which is exactly why Macklin Celebrini should win the Hart Trophy.
