The Bay’s next sports icon has arrived — and he’s only 18

Seven minutes. That’s how long it took for Macklin Celebrini to make his case as the Bay Area’s next great sports star.

On Oct. 10, at San Jose’s SAP Center, in the first period of the Sharks’ 2024 home opener against the St. Louis Blues, Celebrini received a cross-ice pass from forward William Eklund. Celebrini glided coolly into the Blues’ zone, appraising the defense. Then, seeing a lane, he spun, and with an artful, languid whip — while getting shoved in the back by a much larger defenseman — he sent an off-balance, backhanded shot at the net. 

The puck deflected off a defender’s skate, then past the goalie for the score. It was the first goal of the Sharks’ season and of Celebrini’s NHL career. The crowd went nuts, roaring down at the rookie. Celebrini peeled himself off the ice and started roaring back, before getting mauled by his teammates.

To someone like me, who knows very little about hockey, the moment was illuminating: gutsy, but also balletic; fearless, but full of style. To Sharks fans, it was prophetic. 

“I was sitting with my wife … and I just said to her, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe that just happened,’” said Randy Hahn, the Sharks’ play-by-play announcer. (The game was televised on ESPN, so Hahn was watching from the stands instead of the press box.) “It was a seminal moment, I think, for our franchise. We’ve never had this scenario before: the next-big-thing player. It’s totally reenergizing. Macklin is an outlier. He’s special.”

San Jose is already head-over-skates about Celebrini, who was picked first in last year’s NHL draft. “He’s a game changer,” said JD Young, who hosts the podcast “Locked on Sharks.” “He is the foundation that you build a successful organization around. The sky’s the limit for him.”

This is not hyperbole. Most players don’t debut in the NHL until they’re 23 or 24. Celebrini’s only 18.

A kid from North Vancouver, Celebrini spent the 2023-24 season playing for Boston University, where, at 17, he became the youngest player ever to win the Hobey Baker Award. The previous season, playing in the United States Hockey League, he was named player of the year, rookie of the year, and forward of the year —  the first to ever win that trifecta. 

He’s the son of famed sports trainer Rick Celebrini, who has spent the last five years as the Warriors’ vice president of player health and performance. Rick used to bring Macklin around Warriors practices, exposing him from an early age to the ways of elite athletes. Some of those pros — in particular, the Warriors’ Draymond Green — are now among his biggest fans.

Macklin got hurt in that first game against St. Louis and spent several weeks on injured reserve. The Sharks were careful bringing him back, and his absence dulled the hype. His second game back, however, he scored two more goals, including a magical no-look slapshot — Patrick Mahomes on ice. Proclamations of his potential once again rang forth rhapsodically from San Jose. 

“If I have to say he reminds of someone, I’d say it’s a young Steph Curry,” said broadcaster Brodie Brazil, who has been reporting on Bay Area sports since the 2000s. He witnessed the rise of each of the region’s recent megastars, including Curry, Klay Thompson, Brock Purdy, and Buster Posey. He’s seen a few fizzle out, too. “Of course, Steph transformed basketball, and it’s a bit hyperbolic to compare anyone to him. But there was that same sense of, OK, [Celebrini] could and should be special.”

Perhaps nobody in the Bay Area is more excited than a fellow star, Green. The night of Oct. 10, he was seated beside Rick and the rest of the Celebrini family in a box at the SAP Center. He has since taken to rocking Celebrini’s jersey at press conferences. 

Following the Warriors’ Nov. 15 matchup against the Memphis Grizzlies, I asked Green about the young hockey phenom. Green had been ejected from the game that night, and the Warriors had finished sloppily, so his previous answers to reporters had been terse. But when I asked about Celebrini, he lit up. 

“I’m impressed by him, to say the least,” he said. “He’s being compared to the greats at 18, man. LeBron James was being compared to the greats at 18, and he outlived it. Mack has that thing. Whatever people’s hopes are for what he will become, he’ll outdo that.” 

Sports history is littered with the husks of generational talents who failed to reach their as-billed potential. So what does it take to avoid such a fate? And what will it require of Celebrini, specifically?

He has a high hill to climb. Though the Sharks weren’t always bad — less than a decade ago, they were competing in the Stanley Cup — they are not very good right now. They’re also not very popular, ranking among the lowest-drawing teams in both the NHL and the Bay Area. 

I attended the Sharks’ Nov. 18 home matchup against the Detroit Red Wings. There were just as many Red Wings fans as Sharks supporters, and a good many empty seats, too. Celebrini is playing the Bay Area’s least popular sport, for its least popular team. Even if he plays as advertised, what will it take to ensure people notice?

The first step: winning. “At the end of the day, the cultural impact has to intersect with success,” said Hahn, the Sharks’ play-by-play announcer. “Otherwise a player’s cultural impact is negligible.”  

“Let’s be honest,” Brazil said. “A great, legendary player on a bad team — nobody’s going to think highly of them.” Even Curry was not Steph Curry until the Warriors started winning NBA championships. 

Success on the ice requires, among other things, a willingness to work for it. Success off the ice mandates other, less tangible qualities: charisma, poise, level-headedness, good looks. Great news for Sharks fans: Just about everyone I spoke to insisted Celebrini displays all these in spades. 

“He’s got an incredible work ethic,” said Greg Wyshynski, senior NHL writer for ESPN, “which tracks back to his days at Boston University. I think there’s going to be a lot of magnetism to the idea of him being the Great Hope. And there’s pressure that comes with that. But the thing about Macklin that I’m struck by is, he’s charismatic. He’s funny. He’s a good-looking guy. He’s handling it.”

Some of Celebrini’s precocious polish is no doubt a product of his father, who makes his living nurturing athletic talent. Before joining the Warriors, Rick Celebrini worked for the Vancouver Canucks and MLS Whitecaps. He’s also a renowned physiotherapist and, outside the Warriors, has worked closely with superstars like Steve Nash, who used to come over for dinner.

Growing up, Macklin picked up much — habits, comportment, tenacity — through osmosis. When Rick moved the family down to the Bay Area, a pre-teen Macklin started hanging around the Warriors’ practice facilities.

“I’ve known him since he was maybe 10,” said Green. “I went to see Mac play when he was playing with Chicago Steel when we were in Chicago, and this dude came in and chucked him crazy. Mac came back right down the ice and chucked the dude back. Mac didn’t fall; he went right back at him, boom, and just skated to the penalty box. When your best player has that type of attitude, it sets up your organization for success. 

“Mac’s out there getting in the scrums, saving the puck,” Green added. “And I think that’s one of the things that, when you watch him, it makes him so special. He’s in every scrum. Man, your star isn’t in the scrum! You see how he finds space on the [ice]. He just seems so much more advanced. His brain is as good, if not better than, his skill set, and his skill set is one of the best in the league already.” 

To Green’s point, as of this writing, Celebrini ranks No. 1 in the NHL among forwards for puck battle wins per game.

The promise of Celebrini as San Jose’s Great Hope, as Wyshynski puts it, is something the Sharks are in sore need of. Speaking to reporters after a recent practice, head coach Ryan Warsofsky cited the recent dynastic success of the Warriors, 49ers, and Giants and asserted that Celebrini can help the Sharks join their ranks. “We want to be the next team that grows and develops into that winning culture. I think Mack and [fellow teenage prospect Will Smith] … are kind of building toward that.”

Celebrini shrugs it off. I talked to him several days after Green first wore his jersey to an NBA press conference. Though I expected youthful naivete, Celebrini’s already become a master in the art of media diplomacy — deflecting compliments like gnats, deferring credit reflexively, betraying no emotion besides the desire to win. Ever polished, ever aware of all he represents. 

“From season to season, my approach hasn’t changed,” he said. “I’ve tried to play the best hockey I can and keep working on the things I want to do. We have an amazing young core here, and then we have a lot of older veterans that are leading the way. We have a special group. Obviously, it’ll take some time, but we can do some cool things here. I think that’s what fans should be excited about.”

He sounded like he’d been answering reporters’ questions in such a way since he was a child. This was impressive in part because of his still-shocking youth. Most other players in the locker room around us sported scraggly pirate beards and hard-won jack-o’-lantern smiles. Celebrini’s cheeks were as smooth as the ice he skates on. As far as I could tell, all teeth were accounted for. His hair flopped moppily off his head, more like that of the captain of a high school lacrosse team than the future of an NHL franchise. Never mind. He spoke as if that future had already arrived. 

“Hockey is what I love to do, and it’s what I want to do,” he said. “So anyone else who has opinions or expectations of me, just know I have those same ones — or higher — for myself.”

Much of what will determine if Celebrini becomes the next hometown hero is more quotidian: whether he sticks around. 

The NHL has a hard salary cap: $88 million. Unlike another San Jose sports owner — the MLS Earthquakes’ John Fisher — Hasso Plattner, sole owner of Sharks Sports & Entertainment, is not cheap. He’s proved more than willing to spend on good players. But great Sharks of the previous decade, like Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau, gave San Jose hometown discounts when free agency beckoned. If Celebrini grows into the type of superstar the Sharks expect, and if the team’s young core keeps improving coterminously around him, difficult choices may have to be made. 

“Will the Sharks strategically be able to manage their salary cap and be able to keep him?” Brazil wondered. “How many years can he be around?” 

There’s reason to hope the answer is many. The more time I spent watching Celebrini, the more I became convinced that whatever his price tag, it could be worth it. Because lots of people in the Bay Area who don’t yet like hockey might become fans because of him. 

That’s what’s happening to me, at any rate. I grew up a baseball fan in the East Bay, and I’ve skated once in my life — miserably, at Union Square. But watching Celebrini at practice and then at SAP Center, I’ve been rapt. 

This month against Detroit, for example. The Sharks played admirably, taking the Red Wings to overtime. They had the crowd boisterous. Then, 46 seconds into the extra period, the Sharks banged in a shocking, game-winning goal. It happened so quickly that, from the press box, I couldn’t tell who’d scored it.

It was Celebrini. Once again, the crowd went nuts.