Editor’s note: Sheng Peng is a regular contributor to NBC Sports California’s Sharks coverage. You can read more of his coverage on San Jose Hockey Now, listen to him on the San Jose Hockey Now Podcast, and follow him on Twitter at @Sheng_Peng.

Macklin Celebrini was going to get a letter, it was just a matter of time.

The Sharks made Celebrini, 19, the youngest alternate captain in the NHL on Wednesday. He joins San Jose veterans Mario Ferraro, Tyler Toffoli, Barclay Goodrow, and Alex Wennberg in the Sharks’ leadership group.

There was no surprise in the locker room that Celebrini had been anointed, which speaks to how the teenager, just in his sophomore season, has impressed everybody around him since San Jose made him the No. 1 overall pick of the 2024 NHL Draft.

“He’s usually the last guy off the ice and the first guy on it,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “He’s here late, working on his body. He takes care of himself. He cares. He’s competitive. That’s self-driven by himself.”

“He comes to the rink, he prepares well, he obviously performs on the ice,” Ferraro said of the Sharks’ leading scorer last year.

“Mature well beyond his years,” two-time Stanley Cup winner Goodrow said. “[He’s very deserving] of wearing an A.”

The letter doesn’t change anything for Celebrini: The Sharks just want him to keep doing what has made him the youngest alternate captain in franchise history.

“I want Mack to be Mack,” Warsofsky said.

“I don’t really think it’ll change anything I do. That’s not why they gave it to me, to change who I am or what I do,” Celebrini said. “It’s just approach everyday the same and be the [same] person.”

“He just has this natural leadership ability in him,” Warsofsky said.

Ferraro was just 23, in his third season, when then-Sharks coach Bob Boughner made him alternate captain before the 2021-22 NHL season. So he knows what it’s like to wear a letter at a young age. It came with a specific responsibility that Celebrini now will have.

“I think for me, we were surrounded by a pretty young group. When I was given the A, it was to be a leader of the young guys, to represent the younger squad,” Ferraro recalled. “That’s kind of the position that Mack is in right now, too.”

Warsofsky agreed, “We definitely have some young players, young players that are going to come up here, and we got to set the standard.”

The Sharks have perhaps the most enviable collection of youth in the league, including Celebrini, from Will Smith to William Eklund to Yaroslav Askarov to Michael Misa and Sam Dickinson. And now, they’ve found their standard-bearer.

“We think Mack does a really good job of doing that, and the culture that we want to drive here,” Warsofsky said. “It’s my job to hold them to that standard and keep raising that standard, and that’s where you start getting big moves and leaps and bounds in your culture.”

“I think him just being himself, and the young guys will follow,” Ferraro said. “He’s a good role model. He doesn’t have to try very hard to be a leader.”

That said, Celebrini is just 19, and has plenty to learn about being a leader of men. So Stanley Cup winners Goodrow and Toffoli, and Ferraro and Wennberg, are still here to guide him.

“What better way to learn through it, with some really good veterans surrounding him,” Warsofsky said. “He’ll make mistakes, he’ll improve as a leader and as a player.”

“As the year went on last year, he started to have more of a voice,” Goodrow said.

“The more time you spend around some place, the more comfortable you feel, you build a relationship with all the guys,” Celebrini noted.

Celebrini will have to check his emotions at times now, too.

“When you’re a little frustrated, you might have to hide it a little bit,” Toffoli said.

There’s, of course, a balance to that, which Celebrini will learn.

“He’ll wear his emotions on the sleeve. He’ll have to control his emotions, and he’ll learn through his mistakes with that. But I’ll never want to take that away from him,” Warsofsky said. “That’s what makes him great and who he is. I think that’s a special quality to have. He drags guys into the fight in the way he plays and the way he prepares on and off the ice.”

Celebrini spoke to the kind of leader that he wants to be.

No. 1?

“It’s someone who always just sets the example, leads the right way. Your actions have to say more than words. What you do speaks volumes,” he said. “The best leaders I’ve been around have done that. They don’t say one thing and then do the other.”

Also?

“Having the right timing [on] when to say something, when to get mad at guys,” Celebrini said. “Like the right time to get on a guy, or the right time to pick up a guy. Those leaders who are the best, they know the right time to do those things.”

The stage is set now for him to become a legendary leader, like Sidney Crosby and Jonathan Toews, captains that Celebrini had admiration for when he was kid.

“He’s an incredible player. He’s incredible guy, too. I just can’t stop praising him, to be honest,” Wennberg said. “He’s gonna be the face of this franchise. He’s gonna be one of the best players in the league.”

“It’s a huge honor to know that they trust me to be one of the leaders of the team and wear a letter on my jersey,” Celebrini said. “It means a lot.”

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