CHICAGO — At first, we tried to make them out to be the generational megastar and the consolation prize. But then Macklin Celebrini had to go and mess that up by being a fabulous hockey player immediately — posting a goal and an assist in his first NHL game and putting up a rookie season nearly identical to Connor Bedard’s.
Then we tried to turn them into the purely offensive wizard versus the well-rounded picture of hockey perfection. But then Bedard had to spoil that by becoming a fully engaged, fully realized superstar — tenacious and impactful in his own end without sacrificing any of the dynamism in the offensive zone.
OK, so what about this generation’s Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin? Nope, that didn’t stick, either. Crosby has always been quiet and composed, while Ovechkin barreled into the league all bombastic and boyish. Bedard and Celebrini are supremely confident but supremely polite, leaders by example, maybe a little introverted — guarded in public and only goofy in private (and occasionally on Instagram).
So where do we go next? Surely there’s some way to pit these guys against each other, to stoke the fan bases, to brew a rivalry for the ages. Right? It’s what we do in sports. We need friction, a little spice, a little competition. We crave it.
“It’s probably good for the league and good for you guys (in the press) to debate and have those conversations,” Celebrini said before the Chicago Blackhawks’ 6-3 victory over the San Jose Sharks on Monday night. “I don’t think either of us compares each other to the other.”
Not exactly trash talk.
The fact is, they’re old friends, both from North Vancouver, and even played on the same team for a year. They work out together in the summer, picking each other’s brains about their respective processes. Celebrini marvels at how Bedard handled the crushing scrutiny of being the Next Big Thing as a 13-year-old — “I don’t know how he dealt with it” — and Bedard marvels at how quickly Celebrini has reached the upper echelons of the world’s toughest league: “How much he’s producing is unreal.”
They even text regularly.
“We’re not talking about our feelings,” Bedard said wryly. “It’s just like, if he has a good game, I’ll text him. Or vice versa. Just talking, nothing too deep.”
How similar are these guys? At the time of his shoulder injury on Dec. 12, Bedard had 44 points in 31 games, and Celebrini had 44 points in 32 games, tied for third in the league scoring race behind Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid, two of the undisputed best players on the planet. Celebrini and Bedard were each a plus-8 at the time. Both were winning 47 percent of their faceoffs.
Even in the standings, the Sharks and Blackhawks entered Monday night’s showdown — the first of the season between the young megastars — with exactly 16 regulation wins. Only San Jose’s success in the relative randomness of overtime and shootouts (11-4 vs. Chicago’s 5-9) had the Sharks on the periphery of the playoff picture, now five points up on the Blackhawks.
It’s certainly a feather in Celebrini’s cap that he took this leap in his second season while Bedard did it in his third. And Celebrini is headed to Milan later this week with Team Canada and Bedard is not. That’s significant.
But both players are great, perhaps generationally so. Great for their age, great for any age. Both are leading their moribund franchises out of the doldrums and into relevance. Both are living up to the hype. There’s no hatred, no resentment, no real rivalry to speak of, beyond the unquenchable fire that drives every great athlete. No chirps, no digs, nothing.
And what fun is that?
Well, it’s actually all sorts of fun. Watching Celebrini fire off a no-look shot, then chase down his own rebound behind the net and feed Will Smith for a goal, then flick a seemingly impossible shot for one of his own a few minutes later, is what you pay money to see as a hockey fan. Watching Bedard break ankles on a nightly basis like Allen Iverson on skates, attempting one-man rushes most players couldn’t even fathom, fooling elite goaltenders with his patented drag-and-drive release, is exhilarating.
And we all get to do that for the next 10 or 15 years. What more do we need?
Even the wider narrative about the competing rebuilds between Chicago and San Jose feels forced. We could unspool hundreds or thousands of words debating whether you’d rather have San Jose’s young forwards or Chicago’s young defensemen, whether Yaroslav Askaraov’s high ceiling counterbalances Spencer Knight’s high floor, whether Will Smith or Frank Nazar is a better running buddy, whether Michael Misa or Anton Frondell will prove to be the better pick in the 2025 draft, whether San Jose’s prospect pool runs deeper than Chicago’s.
Frank Nazar and Michael Misa don’t generate quite as much hype as their teammates, but they’re magnetic young stars in their own right. (Talia Sprague / Imagn Images)
“It’s an organization similar to ours, that’s gone through a rebuild,” Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill said Monday morning. “Both hope to be real good here in the near future, and be teams that are going to compete against each other. (It’s) similar to when we played Anaheim — they’re fun games to be a part of, not just for tonight’s game, but with an eye to the future as well.”
But the fact is, the Sharks aren’t trying to beat the Blackhawks. The Blackhawks aren’t trying to beat the Sharks. They’re both trying to beat the Colorado Avalanche, the Dallas Stars, the Minnesota Wild, the Edmonton Oilers, the Vegas Golden Knights. They’re running parallel, not perpendicular — not for a while, at least.
Could Sharks-Hawks be hockey’s next great rivalry, fated to meet in the Western Conference final time and time again? We should be so lucky.
But we don’t need to force it, either. We can sit back, let it unfold naturally and enjoy the show. Celebrini is great and the Sharks are on the rise. Bedard is great and the Blackhawks are on the rise, too. Both teams are ahead of schedule, even if it feels like a lifetime since both were perennial powers.
The Sharks will get better. The Blackhawks will, too. What’s really exciting is that so will Celebrini and Bedard. They’re 19 and 20, respectively. They’re just scratching the surface of what they can be. Let’s stop worrying about which one is better, about which team “won” this round of tanking.
Because we are the real winners. We get to watch them for years to come.
Game observations
1. The Blackhawks dressing room was a rowdy scene after the game, their hoots and hollers reverberating throughout the bowels of the United Center. After five straight losses and nearly four weeks without scoring more than three goals, a six-goal outburst was obviously cathartic in the penultimate game before the Olympic break.
“We haven’t won enough lately, and just to be able to score — listen, as a coach, you’d love to win 3-1 and all that stuff,” Blashill said. “But to score six matters. Guys feel better about themselves when that happens, and I know how important confidence is. So it was a good thing for our guys.”
2. Ryan Donato had two of those goals, as he and linemate Ilya Mikheyev (one goal, three primary assists) each had four-point nights. Donato is now up to 13 goals on the season, still well behind his 31-goal pace of a year ago. But with the move he put on Vincent Desharnais for his first goal, which put the Blackhawks up 3-0, it seems like he’s starting to find some mojo.
“It’s just getting those bounces every now and then,” Donato said. “You have plenty of chances that should go in and don’t, and sometimes they don’t deserve to go in and they go in. Hopefully that’s a good sign for the future.”
3. Connor Murphy scored four goals combined over the previous two seasons.
After a seeing-eye wrister found the back of the net in the second period, he now has four in the last four weeks. Hockey, man.
“I think it’s kind of ebbs and flows like that as a defensive defenseman,” Murphy said. “You just happen to get shots that go through, or you happen to get looks that give you a chance more than others. I don’t want to say lucky, but there is a little luck.”
The Blackhawks finish the pre-Olympics schedule in Columbus, then come out of the break with a four-game road trip. It’s possible Monday was Murphy’s last home game in Chicago, as the March 6 trade deadline looms. Right-handed defensemen are always coveted by contenders, and the goals can’t hurt the price.
4. A miced-up Bedard expressed what most Blackhawks fans were feeling when he said, “Finally!” following his first-period goal. It was the Blackhawks’ first power-play goal in 11 games, ending an 0-for-26 skid.
Murphy said the power play scored three straight times during Monday’s morning skate.
“We were kind of not happy, but also chuckling, like, hopefully that gives them a little juice, and it did,” Murphy said. “So after we scored, (Alex) Vlasic looked at me and he goes, ‘We gave them some confidence this morning.’ But they were moving the puck well. We worked on the power play a lot (Sunday) and this morning. Those guys have been working hard.”
5. The power play’s been rough, but the Blackhawks’ penalty kill has been dynamite. The league’s top-ranked unit has killed off 38 of its last 41 penalties dating back to Jan. 1, including all four against the Sharks.
With Murphy, Vlasic, Mikheyev and Jason Dickinson leading the way, the Blackhawks have found their groove at four-on-five.
“Everybody knows in these situation who’s got to go, and who’s got to support, and who needs to be the middle coverage, who’s got to attack the wall,” Dickinson said. “We’re on a good stretch here where guys just know. It’s instinctful, and it’s not like guys are overthinking it and running out of position to open up space. Because that’s what the power play wants, they’ve got to drag somebody out of coverage to create space and then create their opportunities.”