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Sep 25, 2026
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Celebrini is the captain, and 31 of his teammates are older

San Jose gave Macklin Celebrini the C on Friday, at 20. Nobody has worn the C in a San Jose game since January 31, 2024, a stretch of 195 regular-season games.

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Dom CahillSep 25, 20264 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Macklin Celebrini, his name across the shoulders of San Jose's teal home sweater, turns toward fans at the glass while an opponent in a white sweater skates past in the foreground. The photograph carries no date from its source.

Take the 34 players on San Jose's training-camp roster and sort them by birthday, oldest first. Dmitry Orlov is at the top, born in July 1991. Keep reading down. The new captain of the San Jose Sharks is 32nd.

The Sharks named Macklin Celebrini captain on Friday, with Joe Thornton presenting the C. "I know how much this guy means to everyone in this room and in the whole Bay Area," Thornton said, as NHL.com reported the ceremony. Celebrini is 20 years and 104 days old. That makes him the youngest captain in franchise history and the youngest captain in the league right now.

The birthday list#

Only two names sit below him on that list: Michael Misa, 19, and Ivar Stenberg, who turns 19 next week. Sam Dickinson, the defenseman, sits one line above him, older by six days.

Ten players on the roster are 30 or older. Orlov is 35. Tyler Toffoli is 34. Barclay Goodrow is 33, and Jacob Trouba and Alexander Wennberg are both 32. Darnell Nurse, Kiefer Sherwood, Mason Marchment and goaltender Eric Comrie are 31, and Alex Nedeljkovic is 30.

Mike Grier, the general manager, gave the reason in one line at the ceremony: "Your hard work, the way you lead our group." He added the part a roster sheet cannot show: "Just watching you in training camp going double shifts there."

Celebrini will lead a group in which 31 of the other 33 names were born before he was.

The empty chair#

Logan Couture was the last Sharks captain. His last NHL game was January 31, 2024, at Anaheim, only his sixth of that season. He announced his retirement on April 15, 2025.

That leaves a long stretch with nobody wearing the C on the ice. San Jose played 31 more regular-season games in 2023-24 after that night in Anaheim, then 82 in 2024-25 and 82 more in 2025-26. Last season the club did not name a captain at all. It rotated five alternates instead: Toffoli for every game, Goodrow and Celebrini at home, Mario Ferraro and Wennberg on the road.

That group finished 39-35-8. San Jose had 86 points and missed the playoffs, which it has not reached since 2018-19. Celebrini, wearing an A in home games, scored 45 goals and 115 points in 82 games. The 115 broke the club record of 114, which Thornton set in 2006-07.

The Sharks open against Florida on October 1. That will be game 196 since a San Jose captain last dressed.

The letters beside him#

The club named a captain on Friday and no alternates, so those are still to come.

Here is what the club has to choose from. Of last season's five letter-wearers, one left: Ferraro signed with Winnipeg on July 1. Toffoli, Goodrow and Wennberg are all still under contract. Trouba has already been a captain in this league. The Rangers named him their 28th captain in August 2022, and he wore it until they traded him in December 2024.

So the 20-year-old captain shares a room with a former NHL captain who is 12 years his elder.

Three arguments against reading much into it#

  1. A letter changes no shift. Celebrini played 82 games last season and led the team in scoring without it. His linemates, his power-play role and his minutes do not change because the stitching did. In Thursday's 10-0 exhibition win over Anaheim, his line had the smallest five-on-five workloads on the team.
  2. Young captains are too few to count. The Hockey News puts five permanent captains in league history ahead of Celebrini for youth. Five names show who got the C early. They cannot show what the C did for a team. Chicago made the same move this month with Connor Bedard, at 21, which makes two in one September and still is not a trend.
  3. The money arrives later than the letter. Celebrini is on the last year of his entry-level deal, a $975,000 cap hit. The five-year, $94 million extension he signed on July 29 starts in 2027-28, at $18.8 million a season. The club gave him the long contract first and the C second. This season he costs San Jose about one-nineteenth of what he costs from next season on.

Sources: NHL.com, "Celebrini, at 20, named youngest captain in Sharks history," September 25, 2026 (quotes from Thornton and Grier, Couture's retirement date, the alternate captaincy, the opener); NHL Stats API roster and birth dates for San Jose, and Couture's game log; NHL standings, 2025-26 final; Sports Illustrated On SI, "Sharks Announce Alternate Captains Ahead of Season Opener," October 8, 2025; KNBR and theScore, September 25, 2026 (the 115-point record and Thornton's 114 in 2006-07); PuckPedia and CapWages (Celebrini's entry-level and extension terms, Ferraro's Winnipeg signing); MSG Sports, August 9, 2022, and ESPN, December 2024 (Trouba's Rangers captaincy); Chicago Sun-Times, September 15, 2026 (Bedard); The Hockey News, September 25, 2026 (the youth ranking).

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On the record

Called Shots →
OpenJul 29, 2026

Macklin Celebrini's $18.8 million average annual value is NOT the highest in the NHL on July 29, 2027. Scored off any active standard player contract carrying a higher AAV on that date, signed by any player on any club, and counting a signed extension that has not yet taken effect. A hit means at least one such contract exists; a miss means $18.8 million still stands alone at the top.

This follows from the piece's own argument rather than from a hunch about a particular player. The upper limit went from $95.5 million to $104 million to $113.5 million in three seasons, which moves the 20 percent individual ceiling from $19.1 million to $20.8 million to $22.7 million. Records set against a rising cap do not age. The two most recent ones prove it: Kirill Kaprizov's $17 million did not survive a full season, and Leo Carlsson's $18 million lasted about three weeks before Celebrini passed it. Against the call, five-year deals at the ceiling are still rare, most extensions of this size are signed in July and August rather than mid-season, and the specific players who could clear $18.8 million next summer are not yet identifiable, so this is a structural bet and not a roster read. It loses cleanly if the league's next tier of contracts continues to land at 16 to 17 percent of the cap in AAV rather than chasing the raw dollar record. Added 2026-07-29, same night, from Leo's audit: the $22.7 million forward ceiling assumes the CBA's 20 percent individual maximum survives the changeover in September. This call resolves on July 29, 2027, which is after that, so a rule change is a live risk to the mechanism the call leans on. It does not invalidate the call, since a higher ceiling and no ceiling both make it easier and only a LOWER cap on individual salary would protect the record. Recorded because a take should carry the assumption it rests on rather than have it discovered at scoring.

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