SAN JOSE — Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid was labeled a generational talent when he came into the NHL in 2015 and within two years, had a 100-point season, led his team back to the playoffs after a decade-long morass and captured the Hart Trophy.
Roughly a decade later, center Macklin Celebrini is in position to do all those same things — maybe in a more impressive fashion — as he and the San Jose Sharks get ready to face McDavid and the Oilers in a tantalizing matchup between two of the league’s top scorers on Thursday night in Edmonton.
“(McDavid’s) the engine for the team, the heart and soul, with the puck, without the puck, the hardest worker every day in practice, every game. He’s the best,” said Sharks defenseman John Klingberg, who joined the Oilers as a free agent midway through last season.
“It all runs through him, and it all runs through Mack here.”
Without question, while McDavid and Celebrini have different skill sets, their respective careers through their first 1½ seasons in the NHL – and their approaches to the game — are strikingly similar.
After his four-point performance in San Jose’s 5-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday, Celebrini has 141 points in 121 career NHL games. He’s been the Sharks’ No. 1 center since the day he arrived in 2024 and in his short career, has averaged 20:20 in ice time per game.
McDavid missed three months during his rookie season in 2015-16 with a fractured left clavicle but still made a huge impact early on as the Oilers’ top center with 137 points in his first 121 NHL games.
Rounding up, McDavid had a total of 2,459 minutes of ice time in his first 121 games, and Celebrini had 2,461.
McDavid finished with a league-leading 100 points in 82 games in 2016-17, helping lead the Oilers to their first playoff appearance since 2006. In front of a revved-up and revitalized fanbase at the newly opened Rogers Place in 2017, McDavid and the Oilers beat the Sharks in the first round in six games.
Celebrini, too, has helped re-energize Sharks nation, as his phenomenal play — with 78 points in 51 games — is the main reason why San Jose, which finished at the bottom of the NHL standings last season, is now in the mix for their first playoff appearance since 2019.
“He’s a great player, first and foremost,” McDavid said of Celebrini, his future Olympic teammate, on Wednesday. “He’s driven. You could tell, even last year when we played against him. He plays hard. He plays not a typical kind of teenager game. He plays a hard game. He’s dug in on faceoffs, wins puck battles and does all the little things that a veteran does. It’s been impressive.”
The Oilers (27-19-8) are in second place in the Pacific Division largely because of McDavid, who had a staggering 46 points in a 20-game point streak from Dec. 4 to Jan. 13, and leads the NHL with 92 points in 54 games.
Beyond the numbers, though, is the way both players approach the game, and even as teenagers, made the players around them better.
“There’s certain character traits of the great players that come into the game,” said longtime Oilers color commentator Louie DeBrusk, who played 11 NHL seasons, “and they all seem to have it.”
“They’re obviously a little bit of a different player,” Klingberg said of Celebrini and McDavid, “but also a lot of similarities.”
Connor McDavid #97 of the Edmonton Oilers looks to play the puck as goaltender Yaroslav Askarov #30 of the San Jose Sharks defends his net during the second period at Rogers Place on Dec. 21, 2024 in Edmonton, Canada. (Photo by Codie McLachlan/Getty Images)McDavid’s 2016-17 season – in which he was involved in 40% of the Oilers goals — made him the runaway winner of the Hart Trophy, awarded to the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team.
With that in mind, Celebrini is making a strong case to win the Hart Trophy this season. Not only has he been in on roughly 48% of the Sharks’ goals, but he has 42 more points than forward Will Smith, San Jose’s second-leading scorer who just returned to the lineup after missing 13 games with an upper body injury.
“With the best players, you can see that the puck is kind of like a magnet to them,” Sharks center Alex Wennberg said. “Somehow, they always find a way to get it. They’re creating chances but not only that, wherever (the puck is), it just gets to them. It’s just a skill that is really remarkable.”
Historically, the Hart Trophy winner has been on a playoff team, and the Sharks are no lock to the make the postseason this year. The Sharks, via tiebreakers, enter Thursday as the Western Conference’s second wild card team, but have the same number of points (57) as the Los Angeles Kings and Seattle Kraken.
McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon the Colorado Avalanche and Nikita Kucherov of the Tampa Bay Lightning – the NHL’s top three scorers — are all strong candidates for the Hart as well.
But DeBrusk feels regardless of whether the Sharks make the playoffs, Celebrini has made a statement.
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The Oilers have won 14 of the last 15 meetings with the Sharks, including going 4-0-0 last season. But perhaps the playing field will start to level out with the Sharks having a player that appears to be on the same career trajectory as McDavid, a three-time Hart Trophy winner and a five-time scoring champion.
“When you watch the stars of the game, it’s almost like, ‘Hey, this is my candy store,’” DeBrusk said. “I’m going down the aisles, and I’m taking what I want. Some things I don’t like, and some things I love, and the things I love, I’m going to go get it again and again and again.
“You’ll see some tendencies and some things in their game they do on a regular basis, and when I watch (Celebrini), that’s where he reminds me of Connor.”
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