Macklin Celebrini just gave the Islanders a pretty clear number to stare at.
On Wednesday, the San Jose Sharks locked up their 20-year-old star with a record-setting five-year, $94 million extension. The $18.8 million average annual value is the highest in NHL history, and it immediately becomes the benchmark for Matthew Schaefer’s next contract with the Islanders.
Schaefer won’t be eligible to sign until July 1, 2027, when he’ll be 19. But the math is already staring everyone in the face: if Celebrini is the new ceiling, Schaefer is the next player expected to push it a little higher. That means the Islanders should probably be bracing for something in the neighborhood of five years and $95 million - roughly $19 million a season for a 19-year-old.
That kind of deal would fit the way the market has changed around elite young players. The old script, where a player coming off an entry-level contract got a short bridge deal and waited for the real payday later, has been blown apart. Now the top young talents are getting paid early, and they’re still keeping the door open to unrestricted free agency at age 27.
Schaefer, who turns 19 on Sept. 5, is already on that track. He’s entering the second season of a three-year, $2.95 million entry-level deal, and the Islanders will eventually have to decide just how far they’re willing to go to keep him.
The answer, based on everything Schaefer has already shown, is probably all the way.
The first overall pick in 2025 delivered 23 goals and 36 assists in 82 games last season. He finished one vote shy of a unanimous Calder Trophy win, tied the league record for goals by a rookie defenseman, set the NHL mark for most points by an 18-year-old defenseman with 59, and averaged 24:41 of ice time - another NHL record for 18-year-olds.
That’s the kind of production that changes the conversation fast, and Islanders coach Pete DeBoer didn’t need long to see it. He got only a brief look after replacing Patrick Roy with four games left in the season, but the impression stuck. It only got stronger this summer when DeBoer watched the World Cup, including a game in Dallas.
“Maybe the four best players in the world are all in the semifinals,” DeBoer told Newsday recently, specifically citing France’s Kylian Mbappe, Argentina’s Lionel Messi and England’s Harry Kane. “You don’t get to an elite level as a team without that guy.
I guess [Stanley Cup champion] Carolina, you could probably say, is an outlier as far as having a star like that. But they’re very few and far between.
What a player like that does, a generational player like that, it just accelerates everything you’re doing.
“He’s that special a player, I think.”
Schaefer, for his part, sounded more interested in hockey than a future payday when he spoke Monday in Brampton, Ontario, at a charity golf tournament.
“I'll let my agent think about that,” Schaefer told NHL.com on Monday in Brampton, Ontario, at a charity golf tournament. “I don't need to think about that, I'm still a kid, I'm still a year away from any of that.
I love Long Island, we have something so special going on there. I don't care about the money.
I just want to play the game of hockey and that's what I love.”
The Islanders can believe that, and they can also believe they won’t be getting any kind of discount. The market is too hot, the cap is too high, and the elite young players are cashing in early.
That trend was already rolling before the Ducks had to match the five-year, $90 million offer sheet the Flyers gave Leo Carlsson, 21, earlier this month. Then Canadiens forward Ivan Demidov, 20, the Calder runner-up, signed an eight-year, $73.2 million extension on July 1. Chicago followed by giving Connor Bedard, 21, the first overall pick in 2023, a five-year, $75 million extension on July 18.
Celebrini’s deal now sits at the top of the board. Schaefer is next in line.
And the price tag is suddenly impossible to miss.
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