Sharks sign Macklin Celebrini to five-year extension

A record-setting contract, following a record-setting performance, will only continue the track that Celebrini has been on for years. He won the USHL’s ‘Rookie of the Year’ and ‘MVP’ awards in his sole season of junior hockey in 2022-23. That was followed by a break into college hockey with Boston University. Despite being the youngest athlete in Hockey East, Celebrini raced towards 64 points in 38 games and became the youngest player to win the Hobey Baker Award. Both of those seasons were complemented by tremendous performances with Team Canada on the international stage, en route to an easy first-overall selection in 2024.

When asked about the next contract earlier this month in an interview with Greg Wyshynski of ESPN, Celebrini had a lot to consider in light of the Flyers dropping a bombshell $90MM contract in the lap of the Anaheim Ducks with Leo Carlsson. A 5-year, $18MM AAV contract offered to the 21-year-old Swedish center makes Carlsson now the NHL’s second-highest-paid player, beating out Kirill Kaprizov‘s $17MM AAV signed not long ago with the Wild.

Wyshynski also referred to some of Celebrini’s Olympic teammates in Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon as well, in this questioning of whether to take less than expected money. When looking at the history, Crosby signed a 5-year, $43.5MM ($8.7MM AAV) contract that took up 15.3% of the Penguins’ cap in the 2008-09 season. He won the Stanley Cup in that deal’s first year, notably passing the 100-point threshold for the third time in his first four seasons, and scored 31 points in the ’09 playoffs. MacKinnon didn’t take up that much of Colorado’s cap hit until 2023, signing his 8-year, $100.82MM ($12.6MM AAV), 15.09% of the Avs’ books when the contract began. His previous 7-year deal only took up 8.63% in 2016; he won the Cup in the second-to-last year of that contract, making $6.3MM annually.

“…Obviously, guys want to get paid — as they should, because you’ve got to make a living. There are guys that deserve those numbers that are getting them,” said Celebrini via ESPN, “but of course you want to put your team in the best spot possible where you give a team the ability to make moves necessary to win. I think all that goes into the decision.”

Per AFPAnalytics, Celebrini’s next contract was projected at seven years, $119MM, which would’ve been a $17MM annual salary and would have taken up 15% of the team’s cap hit. A league-wide cap limit that reaches a total of $113.5MM in 2027-28 when the deal kicks in. Celebrini will take up 16.56% of the Sharks’ books in 2027, and he’ll make $12MM more annually than the next highest paid forward in Mason Marchment, who San Jose also signed past 2030 this offseason, and nearly $10MM more annually than Darnell Nurse, who the Sharks acquired this offseason in a trade.

San Jose right now has $34.7MM open for business next summer and will have the contracts of Logan Couture, Barclay Goodrow, Adam Gaudette as well as defensemen Dmitry Orlov and Luca Cagnoni expiring at season’s end.

In the next four years, San Jose has other major young talent coming into the NHL at some point, a blessing given how well they’ve performed in their NHL drafts, but it could also end up biting them financially. Along with Collin Graf, who remains unsigned this offseason, they will need to address Will Smith and goaltender Yaroslav Askarov in 2026-27, Michael Misa, Igor Chernyshov, Sam Dickinson, Mattias Havelid in 2028-29, and Ivar Stenberg in 2029-30. That’s just their future RFAs signed to entry-level contracts.

Photo Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images

PHR’s Marcus Antonelli contributed to this article.