Macklin Celebrini keeps forcing the conversation back to the same place: how does a 20-year-old already look like this?
For Zack Ostapchuk, the answer is simple enough. The San Jose Sharks forward has seen it up close, and he says Celebrini’s drive separates him from everyone else.
“He never stops trying to get better. I’ve never been so impressed with a player. And it kind of pisses you off that he’s 20 years old,” Ostapchuk said Monday, before hitting the links at the Vancouver Giants’ season-opening golf tournament at Tsawwassen Springs.
Ostapchuk, 23, is heading into his third full NHL season. The 6-foot-4, 212-pound forward signed a four-year extension with San Jose in June, carrying a $2.35 million annual cap hit.
Before that, he spent three and a half seasons with the Giants and served as team captain. On Monday, incoming Vancouver general manager/coach Michael Dyck had Ostapchuk and fellow former Giants Lance Bouma, Alex Kannok Leipert and David Tendeck address the current roster about team history, identity and expectations.
The Sharks’ side of the story is harder to ignore. San Jose hasn’t announced when training camp will open, but it should be roughly three weeks away, with the Vancouver Canucks’ camp set for Sept. 17-20 at the South Okanagan Events Centre in Penticton.
And the buzz around the Sharks is real. They haven’t made the playoffs in seven seasons, but there’s a growing belief the drought is close to ending. Last year, San Jose climbed 34 points in the standings from 2024-25, finishing 39-35-8 and coming up four points short of a postseason berth.
For Canucks fans watching a rebuild begin at home, the Sharks are the kind of example that jumps off the page. Landing Celebrini with the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NHL Draft gave San Jose a massive head start, and that kind of addition is the sort of thing almost no team gets.
Celebrini, a North Vancouver product who turned 20 in June, finished fourth in NHL scoring last season. His 115 points, including 45 goals, were the third-highest total ever by a teenager in league history, behind only Wayne Gretzky’s 137 points in 1979-80 and Sidney Crosby’s 120 in 2006-07.
Canucks fans won’t get many early chances to see him next season. Vancouver visits San Jose on Oct. 29 and Dec. 14, then hosts the Sharks for the first time on Dec.
- The teams won’t meet again until April 3 in Vancouver, the penultimate regular-season game at Rogers Arena.
Ostapchuk didn’t sound like someone talking about a team still searching for its footing. He said the Sharks expect more.
“We think we’re going to be very good this year. We’re expecting playoffs obviously and good years ahead of us,” Ostapchuk said Monday of the Sharks.
“We have fun together. We’re such a tight-knit group.
We’ve got a lot of younger guys and we’ve got a lot of leadership at the top.
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