{"id":465941,"date":"2026-02-21T18:25:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T18:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/465941\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T18:25:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T18:25:24","slug":"celebrini-goes-for-gold-as-canada-could-lean-on-him-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/465941\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrini Goes For Gold As Canada Could Lean On Him More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Macklin Celebrini will go for the gold medal at the Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games 2026<\/a>, in hopes of becoming just the seventh San Jose Sharks player to earn that achievement.<\/p>\n

If Team Canada earns the gold against Team USA on Sunday, Celebrini would join Owen Nolan, Joe Thornton<\/a>, Patrick Marleau<\/a> (2), Marc-Edouard Vlasic<\/a>, Danny Heatley, and Dan Boyle as Olympic gold medalists. Gary Suter and Joe Pavelski<\/a> had their chance, but earned silver medals for Team USA.<\/p>\n

Team Canada\u2019s head coach, Jon Cooper, deployed the 19-year-old for a team-high 25:53 time on ice against Finland. After the game, Cooper told Jackie Redmond<\/a> that the San Jose Sharks center is generational and that he could\u2019ve played him more.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s generational that kid. And he plays it the right way,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cFor somebody that young to understand where to be, and he\u2019s pulled the risk out of his game that he had in the first game of the tournament. Early on, he would try to make something out of nothing, which superstar players can do. This tournament, you can\u2019t because the best players in the world all check. For him to figure that out so early, and now do the things he\u2019s doing, I\u2019m surprised I didn\u2019t play him more.\u201d<\/p>\n

It will be a tough challenge, as Team USA is seeking revenge for its 4 Nations Face-Off loss last season. Celebrini wasn\u2019t part of that game, but Cooper will once again lean on the Sharks\u2019 young superstar.<\/p>\n

As Sidney Crosby deals with a lower-body injury, the Canadians will have to decide on their top power-play. With Crosby out of the lineup on Friday, Celebrini took the vacated spot of the captain. According to reports, there is 70% chance<\/a> Crosby will play in Sunday\u2019s gold medal game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Macklin Celebrini will go for the gold medal at the Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games 2026, in hopes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5127],"tags":[56224,5,2086,501,4,23103,519,168,5306,5305,1780,8246,768,24660,3037,3255],"class_list":{"0":"post-465941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose-sharks","8":"tag-gold-medal-game","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-jon-cooper","11":"tag-macklin-celebrini","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-olympic-winter-games-milano-cortina-2026","14":"tag-san-jose","15":"tag-san-jose-sharks","16":"tag-sanjose","17":"tag-sanjosesharks","18":"tag-sharks","19":"tag-sharks-news","20":"tag-sidney-crosby","21":"tag-sj-sharks","22":"tag-team-canada","23":"tag-team-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116110027911622086","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465941","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=465941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}