MILAN — Macklin Celebrini looked a bit sheepish at first, the look on his face suggesting that if all things were equal, he probably would have preferred his famous dad didn’t share a moment of young vulnerability and doubt he displayed before leaving for the Olympics.
Rick Celebrini, the Golden State Warriors’ vice president of player health and performance, told The Athletic’s Marcus Thompson II about a phone call he received from his 19-year-old son, wondering whether he was traveling all the way to Italy to simply watch Team Canada play.
“You just look at this roster and look at the guys we have here, obviously I wanted to do my part and be here, but I was just more curious,” Celebrini said with a big smile after practice Tuesday. “You never know until you get here. I wanted to make an impact, but it was just more uncertainty seeing what they were going to do.”
Of course, it didn’t take long for Celebrini’s curiosity to be sated, finding out he would be playing on Canada’s top line with Connor McDavid and Tom Wilson the same evening he arrived in Milan on Feb. 8.
But since that moment, Celebrini has also taken shifts with McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon, the two best players in the world, even though MacKinnon has openly wondered if it’s Celebrini, and not him, that should be in that top pairing of the world hockey order. The line has become a national obsession every time head coach Jon Cooper has decided to use it, but really, it is Celebrini’s place on it that is the most fascinating element of not only that line, or of this team, but perhaps the entire tournament.
Celebrini doing what he is doing at 19 for Team Canada is probably neck-and-neck with what 21-year-old Juraj Slafkovský is doing to lead Slovakia into the knockout rounds as the biggest revelations of this tournament. Both have shown, to varying degrees, they had this in them this season in the NHL — Celebrini is fourth in NHL scoring for the San Jose Sharks, and Slafkovský has been a point-a-game player since Dec. 1 for the Montreal Canadiens. But it would have been impossible to predict that Celebrini would achieve his goal of having an impact on Team Canada, a team with far more accomplished options than Slovakia, to this extent on this big a stage.
It is his partnership with McDavid that has brought Celebrini here, and it is truly a partnership. Celebrini is not riding anyone’s coattails and has left his Canada teammates in awe of what he’s been able to do at such a young age.
McDavid has used the word “impressive” every time he has talked about Celebrini, and the fact that the partnership has gone as smoothly as it has might just be the most impressive thing Celebrini has done here.
McDavid plays at an inhuman pace; he sees things no one else sees, and Celebrini has done more than just keep up. He is facilitating McDavid’s greatness in a way that is nowhere near as easy as Celebrini is making it look, and he is doing that because he is studying McDavid every chance he gets.
“All my linemates I try to talk to a lot — he’s probably getting a little annoyed — but I just try to talk to see if we’re seeing the same thing,” Celebrini said. “We try to read off each other, and especially at a tournament like this, there’s not a lot of time we get to spend together, so the more we talk and the more we work off each other, the more we’ll create. …
“It’s just trying to spend a little bit of time talking to each other, trying to figure out what each likes. Every guy’s different, but especially him. He’s one of a kind. So I’m just trying to make it easy on him.”
Celebrini’s learning has not been limited to picking McDavid’s brain. Before practice Tuesday, Celebrini had a long conversation with Bruce Cassidy, an assistant to Cooper here, but head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights in the NHL. Cassidy and Celebrini were having an exchange; it was not simply a coach lecturing a player, with both pointing to different areas of the ice at various times.
Celebrini’s hockey brain is highly developed for anyone, but especially so for a 19-year-old, and it is scary to think just how much more developed it will be when he returns to the Sharks after this experience.
“I think just watching these guys play and the different systems, getting exposed to different coaches and systems helps me better understand other options and better avenues,” Celebrini said. “It’s just every practice there’s something new, and in games just talking to guys, learning from them.”
The learning does not stop there, because Celebrini has a front-row seat to a passing of the torch in terms of the leadership of Team Canada. Sidney Crosby might be playing his last Olympics — though absolutely nothing should be put past him, Crosby will be 42 when the 2030 Olympics begin — and McDavid is playing his first.
Celebrini has been watching the two of them operate for more than a week now, the present and future captains of Canada, and he’s taking notes.
“It’s amazing,” Celebrini said. ”Those two, it’s kind of Sid, and then Connor, who’s kind of filling in his shoes and kind of taking on that role. It’s really cool to just be around and be a part of.
“They’re different in the way that they carry themselves, but both of them are awesome people and awesome teammates.”
The Sharks don’t have a captain this season, but Celebrini will one day have a “C” on his sweater in San Jose, and his exposure to Crosby and McDavid and MacKinnon and all the great leaders on Team Canada should be very exciting for Sharks fans.
But there’s also a possibility that one day, perhaps in eight years, Celebrini will be filling the shoes of McDavid as the leader of Team Canada, and four years from now the interplay between the two might be very similar to what Celebrini is witnessing between Crosby and McDavid this year.
“Yeah, I mean,” Celebrini said with a nervous laugh, “I’m not really focused on that.”
And he shouldn’t be. He has an immediate task at hand, an incredible challenge of being a top-line forward for Canada at the first Olympics to have NHL participation in 12 years, a challenge Celebrini is meeting every time he steps on the ice for a game or even a practice.
But the rest of us can appreciate and acknowledge the extent to which the future of Team Canada already appears to be in excellent hands, and the lessons Celebrini is learning in Milan only make that future look that much brighter.