The San Jose Sharks have signed Macklin Celebrini to a five-year, $94MM contract extension. The deal was first reported by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. Celebrini’s deal will carry an annual average value of $18.8MM, which would make him the highest-paid player in the league should nobody sign for higher before the deal goes into effect in 2027.
Celebrini will be 26-years-old when he’ll be up for re-negotiation as an unrestricted free agent in 2032.
PuckPedia shared Celebrini’s new contract details, showing he’ll be paid nearly $21MM per season in the first three years:
Year
NHL Salary
Signing Bonus
Trade Protection
Celebrini will secure a king’s ransom after a monumental second season in the NHL. At just the mere age of 20 years old, he has the world of hockey in front of him. In 2025-26, he did it all this year, commanding a star role with both San Jose and Team Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympics and World Championship.
He paid off his role everywhere he went, netting 45 goals and 115 points with the Sharks and a combined 24 points in 16 games with Team Canada.
“In just two seasons as a teenager in the National Hockey League and on the International stage, Macklin has established himself as one of the premier players in the world,” said GM Mike Grier in the Sharks press release. “We are extremely excited to have him secured and committed as the centerpiece of a core of talented players in San Jose.”
Celebrini’s scoring last season marked a new franchise record in San Jose. It also marked the fourth-most points ever scored by a teenager in the NHL – behind only Sidney Crosby (120) and Wayne Gretzky (137, 164). The prodigy has placed himself among historic company while serving as an alternate captain with the Sharks and team captain for Canada’s trip to the World Championship.
He seems well-set to take on San Jose’s ‘C’ as soon as next season – after the Sharks went without a captain, instead utilizing five alternate captains, last season.
A record-setting contract, following a record-setting performance, will only continue the track that Celebrini has been on for years. He won the USHL’s ‘Rookie of the Year’ and ‘MVP’ awards in his sole season of junior hockey in 2022-23. That was followed by a break into college hockey with Boston University.
Despite being the youngest athlete in Hockey East, Celebrini raced towards 64 points in 38 games and became the youngest player to win the Hobey Baker Award. Both of those seasons were complemented by tremendous performances with Team Canada on the international stage, en route to an easy first-overall selection in 2024.
When asked about the next contract earlier this month in an interview with Greg Wyshynski of ESPN, Celebrini had a lot to consider in light of the Flyers dropping a bombshell $90MM contract in the lap of the Anaheim Ducks with Leo Carlsson. A 5-year, $18MM AAV contract offered to the 21-year-old Swedish center makes Carlsson now the NHL’s second-highest-paid player, beating out Kirill Kaprizov‘s $17MM AAV signed not long ago with the Wild.
Wyshynski also referred to some of Celebrini’s Olympic teammates in Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon as well, in this questioning of whether to take less than expected money. When looking at the history, Crosby signed a 5-year, $43.5MM ($8.7MM AAV) contract that took up 15.3% of the Penguins’ cap in the 2008-09 season. He won the Stanley Cup in that deal’s first year, notably passing the 100-point threshold for the third time in his first four seasons, and scored 31 points in the ’09 playoffs.
MacKinnon didn’t take up that much of Colorado’s cap hit until 2023, signing his 8-year, $100.82MM ($12.6MM AAV), 15.09% of the Avs’ books when the contract began. His previous 7-year deal only took up 8.63% in 2016; he won the Cup in the second-to-last year of that contract, making $6.3MM annually.
Obviously, guys want to get paid — as they should, because you’ve got to make a living. There are guys that deserve those numbers that are getting them,” said Celebrini via ESPN, “but of course you want to put your team in the best spot possible where you give a team the ability to make moves necessary to win. I think all that goes into the decision.”
Per AFPAnalytics, Celebrini’s next contract was projected at seven years, $119MM, which would’ve been a $17MM annual salary and would have taken up 15% of the team’s cap hit. A league-wide cap limit that reaches a total of $113.5MM in 2027-28 when the deal kicks in. Celebrini will take up 16.56% of the Sharks’ books in 2027, and he’ll make $12MM more annually than the next highest paid forward in Mason Marchment, who San Jose also signed past 2030 this offseason, and nearly $10MM more annually than Darnell Nurse, who the Sharks acquired this offseason in a trade.
Regardless, Celebrini inked this contract now, and it should be noted that he could’ve waited and signed for more next offseason. His signing now makes the Sharks’ checklist a little lighter and locks him into their plans as a guaranteed 1C.
San Jose right now has $34.7MM open for business next summer and will have the contracts of Logan Couture, Barclay Goodrow, Adam Gaudette as well as defensemen Dmitry Orlov and Luca Cagnoni expiring at season’s end.
In the next four years, San Jose has other major young talent coming into the NHL at some point, a blessing given how well they’ve performed in their NHL drafts, but it could also end up biting them financially. Along with Collin Graf, who remains unsigned this offseason, they will need to address Will Smith and goaltender Yaroslav Askarov in 2026-27, Michael Misa, Igor Chernyshov, Sam Dickinson, Mattias Havelid in 2028-29, and Ivar Stenberg in 2029-30.
That’s just their future RFAs signed to entry-level contracts.
Photo Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images
PHR’s Marcus Antonelli contributed to this article.