The Sharks won the draft lottery and they're expected to make Macklin Celebrini their first overall pick in franchise history.
It was a tough 2023-24 season for the Sharks, but their tanking efforts paid off in the end, winning the first overall pick in the upcoming draft.
The ultimate prize of the 2024 draft class is Macklin Celebrini, a sublime scoring forward who just completed an outstanding freshman season at Boston University. With 64 points in 38 games, Celebrini became just the fourth freshman to win the Hobey Baker Award as the NCAA's top player, joining Paul Kariya (1993), Jack Eichel (2015) and Adam Fantilli (2023).
This is a potential franchise milestone for the Sharks, who have never picked first overall and fallen to the very bottom after dominating the NHL for much of the past decade. They've been quite rudderless for some time, and Celebrini is a great story as the hometown kid. Though he was born in B.C., Celebrini grew up and played minor hockey in the Bay Area, where his father works for the NBA's Golden State Warriors.
The Sharks offense was very thin. Mikael Granlund paced the team with 60 points in 69 games, but he's not considered a top-tier scorer. William Eklund, one of the Sharks' top prospects, finished second in scoring with 45 points, while Fabian Zetterlund, acquired from the Devils as part of the Timo Meier trade, led the team with 24 goals and finished third with 44 points.
Unless you were in deep leagues, Granlund was really only the player of note in fantasy, ranking 65th with 0.87 P/GP despite not getting a ton of help and not having an elite finisher to play with. Eklund's fantasy value is a long-term proposition, Zetterlund was streaky, and both Tomas Hertl and Logan Couture couldn't stay healthy, not to mention Hertl was later traded.
Assuming the Sharks pick Celebrini and he joins the team right away, it'll add yet another young weapon to their burgeoning offense. (Boston College's Will Smith, led the NCAA in scoring this season, has not signed yet, and he's yet another name to keep an eye on.)
The question is: How much of an impact in fantasy hockey will Celebrini have in his rookie season?
Joining the Sharks will certainly raise their profile, especially in fantasy circles, though it's akin to going from "not worth considering at all" to "may be worth considering."
It's always difficult to project point production for rookies, but Connor Bedard would be a good reference point. He finished the season averaging 0.90 P/GP, just slightly ahead of Granlund, with 206 shots on goal and a minus-44 rating.
If we consider Bedard the highest ceiling Celebrini can reach in his rookie season — he isn't perceived to be in the same tier by most pundits, including THN's own Tony Ferrari — then the floor is likely close to Leo Carlsson (29 points in 55 games) and Adam Fantilli (27 points in 49 games).
Bedard was a popular early-round pick in keeper leagues, as he should be, but that's unlikely to be the case for Celebrini. Bedard delivered on high expectations when he played, but he was not immune to getting dragged down by a team that was routinely outplayed, not to mention he was often a target for the opposing defense and missed time due to injury.
The Sharks are still in the early stages of their rebuild, which puts a cap on Celebrini's offensive production and his plus-minus is undoubtedly going to be very poor.
According to naturalstattrick.com, both the Sharks and Blackhawks were equally inept on offense, ranking last or second-last in just about every notable metric, including share of shot attempts and high-danger scoring chances at 5-on-5, and expected goals.
When your defense is as porous as theirs, it leaves very little opportunity to generate offense because you're always stuck in your own zone.
In addition, you have to wonder if letting Celebrini return to Boston U would be best for his development, shielding him from a team that's expected to get battered on a nightly basis again with a new coach behind the bench after David Quinn was fired. Don't forget, there's another potential superstar in the 2025 class that the Sharks can tank for target in NTDP center James Hagens.
Should Celebrini turn pro, it doesn't make sense to play him anywhere but on a scoring line in the top six with significant playing time at even strength and on the power play, perhaps with the top unit. It's difficult to say for sure since the Sharks have yet to name a successor to Quinn, but in most cases in fantasy, lots of playing time equals more opportunities which often equals more points.
A rookie season where Celebrini scores 20 goals and totals anywhere from 40-50 points would be good result. That would put him squarely as a depth player in most fantasy leagues, but he will certainly go higher in keeper leagues, though not nearly as high as Bedard. In redraft leagues, Celebrini is not worth much more than a late-round flier.