After 82 regular season games and more than 4,000 minutes on the ice, it seems reductive to say that the San Jose Sharks’ 2023-24 season rides on Tuesday’s NHL Draft Lottery.
But, well, it does.
The Sharks might be in a top-to-bottom rebuild, but we’re now in year two of general manager Mike Grier’s plan and the Sharks don’t seem to be building towards anything.
Sure, the squad has some nice young depth pieces, but it’s also looking for a new head coach.
But what it’s really looking for is a star to guide it through this dark, dark night.
They could find one if luck (or NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s not-so-subtle hand) goes their way Tuesday. The Sharks have a 25.5 percent chance of winning the No. 1 overall pick. It’s time fate goes their way.
There were three players in the history of the Hobey Baker Award — college hockey’s Heisman — to win as a freshman: Hall of Famer Paul Kariya, Stanley Cup winner Jack Eichel, and Adam Fantilli, the No. 3 overall pick in last year’s draft.
Macklin Celebrini became the fourth this spring. He’s the youngest player to win the award, and he won it as the youngest player in Division 1 college hockey.
If Celebrini wants, he can have a beer at a bar this summer. So long as he’s in his native Canada, of course. He’ll turn 18 on June 13.
(He was born just weeks before I started college. Isn’t getting old the best?)
He might be a kid, but Celebrini is the foundation piece for this unpinned Sharks franchise. He’s the reward for two years of suffering for Sharks fans.
And my goodness do the Sharks need to land him, because there’s no next-best thing in this year’s draft.
(Plus, do you know who his dad is?)
Last year, the Sharks missed out on a once-in-a-generation player in the draft lottery as Connor Bedard went No. 1 to the Blackhawks.
But that draft class was loaded. I maintain there were four elite, franchise-changing talents in that draft: Bedard, Fantilli, Leo Carlsson, and Matvei Michkov.
The Sharks landed the No. 4 pick in that draft and yet somehow didn’t end up with one of them.
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Now, the player they did select, Will Smith, is no slouch. He led the NCAA in points this past season as a freshman. (Don’t let all this freshman success fool you, college hockey is anything but a one-and-done environment.) But Smith is not a franchise changer.
Not to put too much on the kid’s shoulders, but Celebrini is.
I grew up in Chicago as a die-hard Blackhawks fan. Forget Jeremy Roenick and Chris Chelios, I was raised on Tuomo Ruutu, Eric Daze, and Jocelyn Thibault. Hawks’ home games weren’t on local television, and the only thing I was fully convinced of in life was that so long as the Wirtz family owned the team, they would never win a Stanley Cup. It was a hopeless existence. (That might tell you something about me.)
I remember the date I felt hope — Oct. 19, 2007. It was a Wednesday.
That’s when Jonathan Toews took the puck and center ice against the Colorado Avalanche in the first few minutes of his fifth NHL game.
I was watching the Avs broadcast in my apartment in Columbia, Mo. (don’t ask how I got that feed) as Toews weaved through three Colorado players and beat goalie Jose Theodore with a goal for the ages.
“This is the kind of talent,” a giddy Avs analyst Peter McNab said. “That can bring a franchise back from dead.”
A great call.
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Yes, Patrick Kane — the Blackhawks’ No. 1 overall pick the proceeding summer — might have scored more goals and points and went to three more All-Star Games, but McNab was right — it was Toews on whom the Blackhawks dynasty was built.
That’s because, no matter the era, nothing is as valuable as a two-way center in this league.
Toews had the sweet mitts and the ability to score goals from anywhere on the ice, but it was just as much his brilliant defensive play and elite understanding of the full 17,000 square feet of ice that was the foundation of three Stanley Cup wins.
I watched nearly every game Toews played. And having spent the last few months checking in on Celebrini (it’s so much easier to find those feeds these days), I’m convinced he’s the second coming.
Celebrini controls games. He’s always in the right spot on the ice. He always seems to make the right play, even if that’s just a simple, no-fuss pass. He simply operates on a different level than everyone else when he’s on the ice.
He orchestrates.
Sure, his game has plenty of flash — there’s no doubt about that — but his success is predicated on a deftness that you cannot teach.
And while flash lands you on YouTube, deftness wins games.
It’s so easy to imagine Celebrini unlocking William Ecklund and taking Fabian Zetterlund to another level.
A 1-2 center punch of Celebrini and Smith in 2025-26? That’s something to get excited about.
Toews always thrived with a true power forward on his wing — Dustin Byfuglien and Andrew Ladd come to mind. Maybe top wing prospect Quentin Musty could be that player for Celebrini.
And big Shakir Mukhamadullin gliding the blue line behind him? I’m starting to see the vision.
But that’s my imagination working an extra few shifts.
Sadly, that’s all we have with the Sharks right now — imagination.
We can only hope that changes on Tuesday.
