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Top 100 NHL Players: 7. Macklin Celebrini - Michael Traikos  - April 17, 2026 - Vol. 79, Issue. 10

POS: C | AGE: 19 | LY: 90

THERE WERE 42 NHLERS invited to Team Canada’s Olympic orientation camp in Calgary last August.

Three had previously won gold at the Olympics. Twelve had won gold at a World Championship. And 24 were part of the team that won the 4 Nations Face-Off six months earlier.

At the time, Macklin Celebrini had none of those accomplishments on his one-pager of a resume. The 19-year-old was not only the youngest player invited to camp, but he was also the most inexperienced, having just completed his rookie season with the San Jose Sharks. He was considered a long shot.

The feeling among the brass at Hockey Canada was it would be good for the 2024 draft’s No. 1 pick to get a taste of what was to come in 2030, when Celebrini had four more years under his belt. “I would say he was on the outside looking in,” said Team Canada assistant coach Peter DeBoer. “It was like, ‘Hey, great experience for him, and he’s the next generation,’ but I’m not sure anyone had him pencilled in on the team. And then we got a month into the season, and it was like, ‘Whoa, we better pay attention to this guy.’”

In the months that followed, it wasn’t just those at Hockey Canada who paid attention to Celebrini. The whole world took notice. This has been a breakout year for the teenage phenom, who has emerged as one of the NHL’s top scorers and an MVP candidate, following an Olympics where he had his coming-out party in Milan with a tournament-leading five goals in six games. “It’s all pride,” Celebrini said of playing in the Olympics. “You’re just honored to wear the Canadian sweater and represent all the people back at home and all the other athletes that are here. That’s the biggest thing: that we’re all Team Canada. Every athlete, whether they’re in Cortina or down here, we’re all repping Team Canada and trying to make the people back home proud.”

Although Celebrini ultimately fell short of winning a gold medal, he did something few thought possible. Not only did he make the team, but he made his mark as one of the world’s top players.

It’s something Sidney Crosby wasn’t able to do when he was around the same age as Celebrini. In fact, the three-time Olympian was a year younger than Celebrini is now when he was passed over for the 2006 Olympics. In hindsight, Crosby should have made the team. Who knows, had Crosby played in Turin, maybe Canada would have won gold. Twenty years later, management didn’t want to make that same mistake.

Since DeBoer was out of a job at the time, having been fired by the Dallas Stars after a third conference-final exit in as many years, it fell on him to keep tabs on the bubble players. He spent a lot of his time in San Jose scouting Celebrini. He also spent a lot of time on the phone with former Sharks center Joe Thornton, with whom Celebrini lived as a rookie and who had been coached by DeBoer. “Jumbo,” said DeBoer, “is a no-nonsense, no B.S. kind of a guy.” Thornton’s message was direct: “‘Mack’ has been the best guy in the league, never mind Canada.”

In the months that followed, DeBoer quickly “became a believer.” In Celebrini, he didn’t just see an offensively skilled player. He also saw a two-way forward who had a maturity to his defensive game.

For a team that wanted to steer away from one-dimensional players and valued versatility over specialization, Celebrini stood among a group of hopefuls including Connor Bedard, Mark Scheifele and Wyatt Johnston. “Sure enough, as the meetings kind of went, he rose higher and higher,” DeBoer said. “But even when we named him to the team, there was always that question when you get into the Olympics, he hadn’t played in the playoffs. The game is heavier and harder, so how is he going to react? I don’t think any of us knew.”

If there was one thing the coaching staff knew, it was that there was a precedent for this. Coach Jon Cooper was an assistant for Team North America at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, when Auston Matthews made the under-24 team at a time when he hadn’t even made his NHL debut. Not only did Matthews make the team, but he played on the top line alongside Connor McDavid.

So maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise when Celebrini not only made the team but began the tournament on a top line with McDavid and Tom Wilson. At the time, only three players in the NHL had more points than Celebrini. Perhaps more importantly, only three forwards had more takeaways. “It’s funny, but those great players, when you talk to them, aren’t looking to play with the most skilled guys,” DeBoer said. “They want to play with the guys who are the most relentless and play a straight-line game that is going to get the puck back. Their game is built on getting the puck. With Wilson, we know how he’s getting the puck back. With Mack, he does it a different way. His feet never stop moving. The play is never dead in his mind, even if he’s 50 feet away from it.”

From their first shift together, it was clear that Celebrini and McDavid had instant chemistry. Celebrini scored Canada’s first goal of the tournament in a 5-0 win against Czechia and had goals in each of his first four games. In six games together, he and McDavid combined for seven goals and 23 points. The duo became even deadlier whenever Canada needed a spark of offense and replaced Wilson with Nathan MacKinnon on what became known as the “Three Macs” unit, a super line that connected on the game-winning goal with 36 seconds left in the third period against Finland in the semifinal.

McDavid called Celebrini, who won a puck battle that helped set up MacKinnon’s game-winning goal against Finland, “a dog on a bone.” MacKinnon said Celebrini is “maybe the second-best player (behind McDavid) in the world right now.” And Cooper compared Celebrini’s hockey IQ and mental maturity to that of a grey-haired veteran.

“Take his age out of it,” Cooper said. “He may be 19 years old – like, his physical body is – but his acumen for the game is not. He’s wise beyond his years.”

The best part is that time is on Celebrini’s side. Although he didn’t win a gold medal in Milan, he will have plenty more opportunities. How many? Well, consider that Celebrini will be 39 – one year older than Crosby was at this year’s Olympics – by the time the 2046 Olympics roll around.

If all goes according to plan, it could be Celebrini’s sixth time representing Canada.

“He’s a generational player,” DeBoer said. “There’s no other way to put it. To do what he did and what he’s doing at the age he’s at in the level of the Olympics, it just doesn’t happen.”