Macklin Celebrini deserves Hart Trophy votes for carrying the Sharks and wowing the world – The Athletic

Once the puck hit the net and the SAP Center crowd erupted, Macklin Celebrini slammed his stick to the ice Wednesday night and leaped into a teammate’s arms. The San Jose Sharks had just rallied late for a stunning, huge win, and Celebrini finished the night with four points … and none of this is supposed to be happening right now.

Celebrini still had fresh legs to jump, even though he’s carried the Sharks on his back all season. But as we’ve known for a while, Celebrini is a unique teenager. With 13 days to go in the NHL regular season, the Sharks are in a playoff spot. With a victory over Toronto on Thursday, the Sharks pulled level with Los Angeles and Nashville in points but have played one fewer game. The Sharks remain very much in a playoff race nobody expected them to enter this season.

Most, if not all, of that is because Celebrini simply won’t let San Jose slink away. And that’s why Celebrini should be in the mix for the Hart Trophy.

Celebrini is 19 years old. He ranks fourth in the NHL in points (105) and sixth in goals (40). The Sharks’ leaderboard is almost unbelievable for a team in playoff contention, as Celebrini has almost doubled the number of goals and points of his next-closest teammate, Will Smith, at 22 goals and 54 points. Celebrini, who hasn’t yet completed his second NHL season, has been involved in 47.1 percent of the Sharks’ goals.

All of this should stick in the minds of the voters for the Hart Trophy, awarded to the league’s most valuable player. Members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association vote for this award, and while my vote hasn’t been decided yet, it’s time to give some serious attention to Celebrini.

What Celebrini is doing this season is transcendent. This is the kind of season that will be talked about for a long time. On Monday, Celebrini surpassed the 100-point milestone with a three-point first period against the St. Louis Blues. It made him the sixth teenager to reach the 100-point mark in a single NHL season. Three of the previous five — Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Dale Hawerchuk — are in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Sidney Crosby, the last player to do it, 19 years ago, will join them.

But of course, the Hart isn’t just about rewarding a young, emerging star. And the stats aren’t in Celebrini’s favor. In the points race, he won’t catch current supernovas Connor McDavid, Nikita Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon, who are battling at the top. He might climb as high as third in the goals race, but likely no higher. But there should be more than stats considered for the Hart Trophy.

The Sharks have no business being in this playoff race. Based on what pundits have expected from their rebuild, they’re a year ahead of schedule — if not two years — when it comes to postseason contention. This franchise had the NHL’s worst record in the last two seasons, including Celebrini’s rookie year, in which he finished third in Calder Trophy voting.

It’s not as though Celebrini is getting a lot of help. With all respect to the useful players on San Jose’s roster, none of them can be considered a star — Smith is the closest, but he’s not there yet. The Sharks are an adventure on defense and in goal. All of those elements should put a team close to the bottom of the league, but Celebrini’s skill and will are keeping the Sharks in it.

The Hart cases for others are strong. McDavid, with his league-leading 126 points, has factored in 47.8 percent of the Edmonton Oilers’ goals. Playing without injured star teammate Leon Draisaitl, McDavid might drive the Oilers past the Anaheim Ducks for the Pacific Division title. He also has the prestige of being, well, Connor McDavid, a three-time Hart winner.

MacKinnon became the first to reach 50 goals this season and has powered the NHL-best Colorado Avalanche all season.

Kucherov might have the most compelling Hart case. He has been on a scoring burst for months following a pedestrian start (for him, not for most) and with 124 points, he has 41 more than the next closest Tampa Bay Lightning player. Kucherov has the Lightning in contention for the top seed in the Eastern Conference despite the team being beset by injuries throughout the year.

It’s tough to argue against any of those three candidates. But McDavid still had Draisaitl, his fellow top-shelf NHL superstar, alongside him for most of the schedule. MacKinnon tore out of the gate this season, but he’s surrounded by talented teammates who can pick up any slack. As short-handed as the Lightning have been at times, Kucherov still had other elite talent around him and a Vezina-level goalie in Andrei Vasilevskiy.

Celebrini has absolutely none of that on his side.

It has been a long year for the rising superstar now widely known as “Mack.” Mixed in with his routine heroics for the Sharks was his first appearance at the Olympics with Canada. Celebrini scored a team-high five goals in six games and finished second on the star-studded team with 10 points. Coach Jon Cooper trusted Celebrini so much that when Canada needed a “nuclear option,” he put Celebrini on a line with McDavid and MacKinnon — two megastars and a teenager.

Then, just when it seemed as though this feel-good story would end in late March, after the Sharks lost six consecutive games — during which Celebrini totaled only two points — guess who emerged again? Celebrini now has five goals and four assists in his last four games.

Yes, the Pacific Division deserves the jokes and criticisms for its overall weakness. Yes, in most seasons, the Sharks wouldn’t be hanging around the playoff picture with their 36-31-7 record and modest .534 points percentage. But who cares? They’re in the fight right now, and Celebrini is throwing haymakers.

“I think we had expectations on ourselves,” Celebrini told reporters Wednesday night, after he had a goal and an assist within the final two minutes to beat the Ducks. “You can say all you want about the division or the position we’re in. The goal is to make the playoffs, and that’s what we’re going to try to do.”

Without question, McDavid, MacKinnon and Kucherov are having special seasons. But what we are witnessing from Celebrini is something for the ages. He’s a teenaged force of nature, willing what might otherwise be a basement-residing club to the kind of season few expected. Playoffs or not, it’s been Hart-worthy.

When TNT analyst Paul Bissonnette asked Sharks forward Ryan Reaves what it has been like to play alongside Celebrini, Reaves said, “It’s like watching a god on the ice.” It was a humorous bit of tire-pumping from Reaves, for a national television audience, with Celebrini standing next to him.

Except this teen is doing something few NHL mortals have done. The Hart Trophy winner is “adjudged to be the most valuable to his team.” How is it not Celebrini?