a phone call he received<\/a> from his 19-year-old son, wondering whether he was traveling all the way to Italy to simply watch Team Canada play.<\/p>\n\u201cYou 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,\u201d Celebrini said with a big smile after practice Tuesday. \u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, it didn\u2019t take long for Celebrini\u2019s curiosity to be sated, finding out he would be playing on Canada\u2019s top line with Connor McDavid and Tom Wilson the same evening he arrived in Milan on Feb. 8.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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\u2019s place on it that is the most fascinating element of not only that line, or of this team, but perhaps the entire tournament.<\/p>\n
Celebrini doing what he is doing at 19 for Team Canada is probably neck-and-neck with what 21-year-old Juraj Slafkovsk\u00fd 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 \u2014 Celebrini is fourth in NHL scoring for the San Jose Sharks, and Slafkovsk\u00fd 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.<\/p>\n
It is his partnership with McDavid that has brought Celebrini here, and it is truly a partnership. Celebrini is not riding anyone\u2019s coattails and has left his Canada teammates in awe of what he\u2019s been able to do at such a young age.<\/p>\n
McDavid has used the word \u201cimpressive\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll my linemates I try to talk to a lot \u2014 he\u2019s probably getting a little annoyed \u2014 but I just try to talk to see if we\u2019re seeing the same thing,\u201d Celebrini said. \u201cWe try to read off each other, and especially at a tournament like this, there\u2019s 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\u2019ll create. \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just trying to spend a little bit of time talking to each other, trying to figure out what each likes. Every guy\u2019s different, but especially him. He\u2019s one of a kind. So I\u2019m just trying to make it easy on him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Celebrini\u2019s learning has not been limited to picking McDavid\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Celebrini\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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,\u201d Celebrini said. \u201cIt\u2019s just every practice there\u2019s something new, and in games just talking to guys, learning from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 though absolutely nothing should be put past him, Crosby will be 42 when the 2030 Olympics begin \u2014 and McDavid is playing his first.<\/p>\n
Celebrini has been watching the two of them operate for more than a week now, the present and future captains of Canada, and he\u2019s taking notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing,\u201d Celebrini said. \u201dThose two, it\u2019s kind of Sid, and then Connor, who\u2019s kind of filling in his shoes and kind of taking on that role. It\u2019s really cool to just be around and be a part of.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re different in the way that they carry themselves, but both of them are awesome people and awesome teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sharks don\u2019t have a captain this season, but Celebrini will one day have a \u201cC\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I mean,\u201d Celebrini said with a nervous laugh, \u201cI\u2019m not really focused on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he shouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 Macklin Celebrini looked a bit sheepish at first, the look on his face suggesting that if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5127],"tags":[5,54125,4,2602,519,168,5306,5305,1780],"class_list":{"0":"post-461173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose-sharks","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-mens-olympic-ice-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-olympics","12":"tag-san-jose","13":"tag-san-jose-sharks","14":"tag-sanjose","15":"tag-sanjosesharks","16":"tag-sharks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116087787538463512","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}