What makes Macklin Celebrini so good? 4 stories that reveal why he’ll transform the Sharks (2024)

On Friday night, Macklin Celebrini is expected to be the No. 1 selection at the 2024 NHL Draft.

Between a standout performance for Team Canada at the world juniors and a dominant season in the NCAA as a 17-year-old, Celebrini has lived up to the hype in his draft year. He’s left no doubt about his status at the apex of the 2024 draft class.

Celebrini’s blue-chip skill set stands out when you watch him. Though he’s got the speed and shooting talent of a conventional first-overall-level player, there’s a notable and rare completeness to his game. Even more so than his one-timer or puck skills, Celebrini’s mature two-way game and understanding of how to play winning hockey leaps off the ice.

As Celebrini gets set to begin his NHL career on Friday night, here are four anecdotes from coaches, teammates and family that testify to the competitiveness, skill and force of will that have set him apart.

The MVP defenseman

The annual Brick Invitational Tournament hosted in Edmonton is the most competitive youth tournament in North America for 10-year-old players.

Hockey is a young man’s game. Already at the age of 10, even at a wildly precocious age, some elite players begin to separate themselves from other elite players in their age group.

A variety of current NHL stars like Mathew Barzal, Cole Caulfield, Connor Bedard, Jack Hughes, Trevor Zegras and Wyatt Johnston all dominated the tournament. It was a venue for those players to provide the hockey world with an early sign of what was to come.

Celebrini had a similar star turn at the Brick Invitational. Representing the BC Junior Canucks, he won the tournament as a 10-year-old and was named tournament MVP. Celebrini’s Brick Invitational story is a bit unique, even if he didn’t have a Bedard-like overtime winner at the tournament or a Caulfield-like scoring explosion. Celebrini, in fact, only managed two goals and four points in six games.

He was named tournament MVP, however, because he controlled the entire game while playing as a defenseman.

“Macklin had the ability to play defense or forward, center or wing,” explains Vancouver hockey coach Jon Calvano, who coached the BC Junior Canucks at the tournament. “And you really saw with Macklin after this Brick year, he was 10 years old and he played defense on that team we had. He was the MVP of the tournament and the top defenseman of the tournament. And if I’m remembering it correctly, he’d never played the position before.”

Now, it’s a good story — the hockey prodigy moving out of position and immediately dominating the best talent in his age group — but the truth is a bit muddier. Celebrini had played defense before. His intention, in fact, was to play defense full-time going forward. He’d mostly played forward to make sure that he continued to develop his puck skills.

“It looked like he was taking to the position,” explains Macklin’s father, Rick Celebrini. “The thinking was that he should play forward for a couple of years before his bantam draft in the WHL, because at the time we thought that was the path he was going to go, and then switch him back to defense before the draft.

“Then that next season at the North Shore Winter Club I think he had something like 200 points in peewee. So he stayed as a forward. He loved it, loved playing center, loved driving the game. So he was a forward, then a defenseman, then a forward with the intention of moving back to defense, but that never really played itself out.”

“Yeah, I played D for two to three years,” is how Celebrini recalls it. “At that tournament and two other years of winter and spring hockey as a defenseman.”

Whatever position he played, Macklin’s two-way game and his defensive awareness benefited from his experience moving around the lineup positionally.

“I moved back to forward, I think, a year after the Brick tournament. Honestly, I loved being a defenseman, it taught me how to see the ice and how to see plays develop. Defensem*n have a bit more time back there and being able to survey the ice, see what’s open, having that vision in my mind even now when playing forward, knowing what the defenders see, I think that’s been huge for me.

“It’s about understanding both sides of it. Knowing what our defenseman see, I feel like I can help them out.

“Also, learning how to play defense taught me a lot about how to attack defensem*n. How a defenseman feels when you take him wide or when you make a move on him. It just opened up a lot of knowledge for me.”

“No f—ing swearing”

The Brick Select team that Calvano brings to the annual Edmonton showcase is composed of some of the best and brightest players from across British Columbia. Most of the players would’ve played against one another in previous tournaments, and there are some teammates and pre-established friendships going in.

For the most part, though, in the early part of the tournament, it’s a group of super-talented 10-year-old hockey players trying to build chemistry before the highest-profile games of their young lives to that point.

And it’s in this moment that some early signs of Macklin’s flair for leadership began to show themselves, and in a rather colorful way.

“I’ll tell you a funny story,” says Rick Celebrini, noting that he wasn’t sure if we could use the material.

“One of the coaches with the Brick Team came up to me. It’s after the very first practice, and it’s kids from all over the province. So everyone is really quiet and I guess Macklin had picked this up from one of the midget teams at the North Shore Winter Club, he’d overheard one of those kids saying it. So it’s dead quiet, that nervous, anxious sort of feel in the room.

“So Macklin stands up, and it’s at the Burnaby Winter Club, so it’s sort of home turf for him. And he says, ‘Listen up boys! There’s only one rule here! There’s no f—ing swearing in the f—ing dressing room.'” So everyone bursts out laughing, it broke the ice, the whole mood changes and all the guys start talking.

“The coach said to me, ‘For him to do that and he’s only 10 years old,’ and I thought he was going to get pissed off because Macklin swore, but instead it was very complimentary.”

Open ice at the North Shore Winter Club

As a young hockey player, Macklin and his older brother, Aiden Celebrini — a Vancouver Canucks draft pick at the 2023 NHL Draft — were regulars at the North Shore Winter Club’s open ice sessions.

At open ice, young players are able to work on drills in an unstructured environment. There are no set drills, no coaches. Informal area games are common, but for the most part at open ice, you’ll just find a collection of the most dedicated young rink rats in any of the big minor hockey associations taking the time to hone their individual skills.

Rather remarkably, at the North Shore Winter Club about a decade ago, you could find three future top-five NHL draft picks working on shooting and puck skills on a regular basis. Two of those players — Macklin and Connor Bedard — were bound to be selected No. 1 in back-to-back years.

“I have been on the ice with Macklin when I was at Bantam, I would’ve been 14 or whatever and I’d guess he was 8 or 9 years old,” Columbus Blue Jackets forward Kent Johnson, the No. 5 pick at the 2021 NHL Draft, told The Athletic a few years ago. “Him and his older brother would be out at open ice a lot, no coach, just doing their own drills. A guy like Bedard would be out there a lot too, and you get to know kids a bit, play some two-on-two or three-on-three with them.

“I remember talking to Macklin, and talking about how young he was, and I remember being surprised by how good he was. Seeing how well he’s doing now is fun. It’s like, ‘Oh cool, another one.'”

You can’t underestimate the impact that growing up around this sort of competitive environment had on Macklin. He watched Bedard dominate at his minor hockey association — Bedard was a year ahead of Macklin — and he watched him closely.

“Connor and Macklin grew up in the same minor hockey association,” explains Calvano, who coached both players at the Brick Invitational and with the Vancouver Vipers in Spring Hockey. “Connor being a year older motivated Macklin to catch Connor, and that created that compete. Macklin wanted to be as good as Connor and wanted to get to the same stature as Connor within the same, small minor hockey association.”

“Watching him pretty closely and just picking up the little things, like we’d be out there on open ice, and he’d just score one after the other on a goalie,” Macklin recalls of those open ice sessions with Bedard. “And the goalie and everyone out there on the ice would just be shaking their heads, ‘How is he doing this?’ I feel like it was definitely important for me to see that stuff.”

“Didn’t score though”

Macklin and Aiden are extremely close. Although Macklin is a year younger, he played up an age group throughout most of their hockey-playing lives. They’ve been frequent teammates, constant competitors and each other’s most ardent supporters.

This past year, they played for the Boston University Terriers together, one of three sets of brothers on the team.

“Playing with my brother at this level, I mean, you can’t ask for anything more,” Macklin told The Athletic after a dominant performance in a BU rout of Merrimack back in February.

“We have three sets of brothers on the team, and it definitely helps the chemistry of our group. There’s that built-in relationship with brothers on the team, and I think we’re all getting that close.”

Playing the occasional shift together, there’s an immediate chemistry between Macklin and Aiden. It’s the product of a lifetime spent on the ice with one another.

“Especially it being him, I know if I get the puck to him he’s creating something,” Aiden says of the experience. “He sets me up for some nice looks and it’s on me to bury some of those, get that real brotherly connection going.”

On the night I watched Macklin crush Merrimack — he only had one goal and two points, but he had seven shots on goal — it was impossible not to be astonished by the ease with which he skated through the opposition as a 17-year-old at the Division 1 level.

Does it always look like that?

“That’s just Macklin,” Aiden says, brushing aside what seems remarkable to outside observers but is commonplace for him. “I don’t think there was one time where I even thought it was different. He does it every time.

“Our teammates will lose their minds on the bench, like, ‘Oh, wow that was sick!’ and I’m sitting on the bench shrugging. I’ll look down the bench and just say to them, ‘Yeah he didn’t score though.’

“I’m just so proud of him. He’s gotten it all, but he’s done it all himself. He wasn’t born with this talent. He’s made himself like this. He’s been getting better and better year by year. It’s not like he just arrived at the top, he’s climbed his way there, and now he’s separated himself.”

(Top photo: Mike Stobe / NHLI via Getty Images)